


quando caeli movendi sunt et terra (when the heavens and earth shall be moved)

by gravityinglass



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, OC child death TW, a beginner's guide to pantheistic human deism, death tw, modernized Greco-Roman mythology, techically a Hades/Persephone modern myth (not a retelling), there is some death involved but with a definite afterlife, this is a story about the god of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: The god of spring met the god of a death in a harvested field, the sun setting and the dirt warm under their feet. It was the place where their powers met, the death of the plants the spring god so lovingly tended.“You’re late this year,” the god of death said, raising an eyebrow. He was dressed in a thick cotton hoodie despite the warmth swirling around them and sunglasses despite the dimming light. The god of spring wore jeans torn at the knees and a loose black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and he had a lip ring this year. Neither of them looked particularly like what they were supposed to.The god of spring reached out to pull Auston into a hug, a shit-eating grin on his face. His mortal form was young this time around, male and slim, with copper-bright hair. It was a stark contrast to the genderless force of power that was Persephone. “You missed me.”“Get off me, Connor,” Auston said, but it was affectionate. Connor didn’t let go. “Connor. I am the god of death. I do not hug.”--Or, Connor is Persephone. Freddie is Hades. With the help of Auston and Mitch, they change the laws of the universe yet again.
Relationships: Frederik Andersen/Connor Brown, Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews
Comments: 18
Kudos: 73
Collections: Hockey Big Bang (2020)





	quando caeli movendi sunt et terra (when the heavens and earth shall be moved)

**Author's Note:**

> For this HBB, I am incredibly honored to be working with [ Callabang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callabang/pseuds/callabang), who has made a fanmix to go with this fic! That mix can be found [ here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/614Hnb3yVSHaaqbItOBSWF).
> 
> Title from [Libera Me](url), as found in Faure’s Requiem. 
> 
> If you believe in the Greek deities, I am so sorry for the extreme blasphemy I’ve thrust upon you. Everyone else, this is a fun exploration of how modern myths might evolve and change. Some obscure gods pop up. It’s fun. 
> 
> Some worldbuilding notes: Persephone and Dionysus are full siblings, both children of Zeus and Demeter; there are a lot of myths that say all sorts of things about Dionysus’ parentage including Persephone-Zeus, Demeter-Zeus, Semele-Zeus, on and on. At some points he is also inferred to be Demeter’s husband, but in this he is the child of Zeus and Demeter, and the older brother of Persephone. There is an amount of hand-waving necessary to make this work, but go with it.
> 
> I’ve chosen to emphasize Dionysus’ role as a fertility god more than as a god of drinking, but if you’re thinking of the PJO version of Dionysus, that’s not what you’ll get here.

The god of spring met the god of a death in a harvested field, the sun setting and the dirt warm under their feet. It was the place where their powers met, the death of the plants the spring god so lovingly tended.

“You’re late this year,” the god of death said, raising an eyebrow. He was dressed in a thick cotton hoodie despite the warmth swirling around them and sunglasses despite the dimming light. The god of spring wore jeans torn at the knees and a loose black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and he had a lip ring this year. Neither of them looked particularly like what they were supposed to.

“It was a good summer, and I stayed late last winter.”

“He’s not going to see it like that.”

“He never sees it like that.” The god of spring smiled, and the sun flashed brilliantly as it sank over the horizon. “It’s good to see you, Auston. I missed you.”

“No one missed you.”

“Freddie missed me.” The god of spring reached out to pull Auston into a hug, a shit-eating grin on his face. His mortal form was young this time around, male and slim, with copper-bright hair. It was a stark contrast to the genderless force of power that was Persephone. “ _ You _ missed me.”

“Get off me, Connor,” Auston said, but it was affectionate. Connor didn’t let go. “Connor. I am the god of death. I do not  _ hug _ .”

“The god of death doesn’t get hugged enough,” Connor countered,  clinging tighter. Around their ankles, grass sprouted, tangling stalks around Connor’s bare feet . Auston yelped, twitching away from the grass. “The god of death needs snuggles.”

“The god of death does not  _ snuggle _ .”

“You snuggle when it’s me,” Connor sing-songed. Auston rolled his eyes and pushed Connor off. “Are we taking the long way or the short way?”

“If we take the short way, are you going to get sick again?”

“That was  _ once _ , and it was five hundred  _ years  _ ago.”

“It was a century at the most,” Auston said, and gestured over his shoulder. “Portal’s the fastest way, and he’s in a mood, seeing as you were supposed to be back weeks ago.”

"Portal it is, then."

"Your babysitter knows you're leaving?"

"Mitch? He's not my babysitter. Why, wanna meet him?"

Auston flushed. "Let's go."

"No, seriously, I think you'd like him. God of parties, drinking." Connor winked. "Baby making."

"I am the  _ god of death _ ," Auston whined petulantly, and gestured so that the portal to the Underworld opened, swirling blue and silver. "Goddammit, why does it always do that when you're here? It's supposed to be foreboding and terrifying. It's not supposed to  _ sparkle _ . Connor, what the hell did you do to my portals?"

"Must be my natural charm," Connor teased. 

“Oh my god, let’s go.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

Hell was a waiting room. Literally. Most souls brought there by Thanatos--who preferred the name Auston, these days--sat in neat, orderly rows, clutching numbered tickets with shell-shocked expressions. As their numbers were called, they went to see Hades, King of Erebus (who now went by the name of Freddie, his personal form shifting with the times even as his godly form did not). They would either argue for a second or third try and attempt to reach Elysium; or, they would find out they were condemned to Tartarus or if they would simply reside in the Asphodel Meadows, as most mortals did after death.

Auston led Connor through the rows, though by now Connor knew the path as well as Auston did.

“The giant painting of the dogs playing poker is new, right?” he asked. 

People waiting flinched away from Auston--the last time they’d seen him, after all, he’d taken them away from life and loved ones--but instinctively turned towards Connor, a simmering source of warmth in the coolness of hell. Even their mortal bodies hinted at their godly forms. It didn’t help that the Underworld began to brighten at Connor’s presence, welcoming Persephone home.

Auston shrugged. “Everything changes so often I don’t ever bother remembering.” He winced. “Ooh. Bus crash in North America. Fifteen dead. That’s going to leave a mark on the interstate.”

“Need to go take care of it?”

“I am omniscient and all powerful,” Auston insisted, pouting a little. “I  _ am  _ taking care of it, and you at the same time.”

Connor caught sight of greenery bordering the room and rolled his eyes. “He put in fake potted plants?”

“Real plants don’t grow here.” Auston blinked, remembering who he was talking to. Connor, as the god of summer and greenery, found plastic plants to be an Extreme Offense. “Oh, shit. He put in fake potted plants? When did he even have time to do that?”

“Did he really miss me that much?” Connor said lightly, and flicked his hand towards the plants, causing them to change from plastic to living, breathing greenery. “He could have sent a letter.”

“It would be a hundred page manifesto on his devotion to your body.” Auston side-stepped a pair of toddlers playing in the aisle. Accidental drownings, by the look of their wet clothes. Connor followed suit. “Do you  _ really  _ want to cause something like that to come into existence? Because I don’t.”

“Why not? Because he’d make you proofread it?”

Auston pointed at Connor. “ _ Exactly _ . He’d make me proofread it, and I’d have to cause a disaster in Australia to get away from it, and really, we have more than enough work to do down here already.”

“As long as you don’t cause a drought, I won’t get involved.” Connor paused, seemed to consider what he’d just said. “Wait, don’t kill anyone with a rain of frogs, either. Or locusts. Locusts are hell on my crops. And so are frogs. If you love me, you’d curse the earth with a nice plague of bees.”

Auston looked at Connor over his sunglasses. “I can’t get away with any plagues anymore, people start thinking it’s the end of the world. With stuff like that, they either find a cure, or I’m forced to fake ‘divine intervention’, and then I have to find something new to do. I never get to have any fun with deaths any more.”

“First of all, it actually  _ is  _ divine intervention if Freddie makes you fix it personally. Secondly, I’m fairly certain he told me you killed someone with a paintbrush and a can of chicken soup a year ago. Don’t try and pull one over on me.” Connor fought a wave of exhaustion. “He in his office?”

Auston tried and failed not to look guilty. “He, uh. Might have installed a throne since you were last here.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s his old one, so. Not awful, but getting there.”

Connor sighed heavily. “It wouldn’t be bad if he weren’t such a dick about everything. I’ll see what I can do.” He gave Auston’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and turned to enter Freddie’s throne room.

“Connor?” Auston said. Connor paused.

“Yeah?”

“He installed a throne for you too.”

Connor fish-mouthed. “He  _ didn’t _ .”

“It’s not awful or anything,” Auston eased, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture. “I couldn’t talk him out of it.”

“You helped him pick it out, don’t lie.” Connor pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “If he makes me sit on it, I’m going to fill your bed with undying briars and laugh when you can’t kill them.”

Auston laughed. It was a haunting, hollow sound, but it was sincere. “He really missed you, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Connor smiled and hugged Auston suddenly. “I missed you too.”

Auston froze for a second, and then hugged Connor back. “Welcome home, Conn.” He shimmered and dissolved, presumably to go do his actual job of escorting the dead to the Underworld, and not escorting wayward gods to visit their husbands. 

Connor turned the door handle and stepped into the throne room, a large and open, brightly lit hall. It looked different to everyone who set foot into the room; to Connor, it was a regally decorated hall reminiscent of the Renaissance age. To the average mortal, he assumed it was dim and horrifying, but he wasn't entirely sure. True to what Auston had said, there were two black thrones at the head of the room, raised on a dais, and Hades occupied one.

Connor leaned in the door frame, watching as Hades--not  _ Freddie _ , not in this form--directed the trials of recently arrived souls. He didn’t close the door, causing Hades to growl in rage.

“ _ One more step, and you sentence yourself to an eternity in Tartarus. _ ”

“I know you didn’t forget what time of year it is, darling,” Connor said softly, causing Hades to turn all of their overwhelming power and attention in Connor’s direction. Connor bore the full weight of it until Hades cleared the room with a thunderous wave of their hand. It took mere seconds for the god-form to melt away, and less than that for Freddie to cross the room. 

Connor gave a delighted laugh when Freddie lifted him up and spun him around. It was always a bit of an adrenaline rush to feel the weight of Hades’ god form shifting into the warmth of his most current human incarnation. “You’re such a grumpy old man,” he teased, giving Freddie a greeting kiss. 

“Not my fault,” Freddie argued back, eyes crinkling with the width of his smile. “If I get another sentence review because someone believes the kings sentenced an innocent to Tartarus, I’m gonna start setting people on fire if they so much as breathe the words ‘trial by jury.’”

“Oh, poor baby.” Connor didn’t even blink when Freddie opened up a portal behind them and stepped through it so that they were in their bedroom instead of the judgement chambers. “Why don’t you take a little time to cool off, hm? Take it out on me for a little while.”

Freddie made a noise like he was deeply considering that. He walked over to lay Connor back on the bed before stripping them both out of their clothes. “I think I’ll take my time with this. See if we can’t make the headboard erupt in gardenias again.”

Connor laughed, gasping a little when Freddie slid between his legs. “M’not a virgin anymore, babe. You’ll have to try a bit harder.”

“I don’t think  _ harder _ is going to be an issue.” Freddie paused to worry a little possessive mark into the skin of Connor’s throat. “You come quick the first time anyways. I’ll just make sure not to stop. Make you cry a little.” He reached out for the bedside table drawer, swearing against Connor’s mouth when their erections fit together in a dry grind between their stomachs. “You’re so fucking pretty when you cry, Conn.”

Shaking a little, Connor gripped the headboard and tightened his knees around Freddie’s waist. “Do your worst,” he breathed.

◉◎◈◎◉●

It was a long and trying day. Freddie had left Connor asleep in their bed, tucked in amongst the sheets, despite the fact that he’d give almost anything to stay there with him. The problem was that nothing truly stopped in the Underworld--people kept dying, stupid mortals--and needed to be sorted into their proper afterlifes, and Hades was the only one officially allowed to review anything.

As if the universe recognized that Freddie wanted to be anywhere but at work,  _ everything  _ went wrong.There were at least three destination mix-ups that he had to fix, and Auston had popped in to remind him of the typhoon scheduled to hit southern Asia that week, which would certainly result in an unnatural influx of souls (and of course, Auston had waited until Connor was home to tell him that), and then there had been a perimeter breach ( _ fucking demigods _ , really, he was so glad he didn’t have any) and he’d spent the rest of the day being intimidating at a bunch of fucking  _ teenagers  _ who hadn’t realized they were messing with the literal god of death and king of hell, and to top it off, all he could think of was Connor, and how he couldn’t touch him until all of his work was done, or else people would come smashing down his door in the middle of their private time, and he was so  _ done  _ with today.

Auston helped him with the last few trials of the day, and followed him back to the palace.

“You staying tonight?” Freddie asked, raising an eyebrow. Auston usually got the fuck out of dodge whenever Connor was around, claiming that he could hear them having sex across the entire palace and he didn’t need to think about his best friends like that, thank you.

“I was thinking of staying for dinner. It’ll be what, pomegranates and roasted souls of the innocent?” Auston teased.

Freddie pushed him, a little meanly. “There’s a reason it’s called  _ myth _ ology,” he grumbled. “And no, I think we’re having spaghetti. Connor is still vegetarian, dumbass. Has been since the sixties.”

Auston wrinkled his nose at the daffodils that now covered nearly every flat surface in the house. “Connor’s definitely here.”

Freddie smiled, his annoyance with the day slipping away. “It’s great, isn’t it?” 

The palace shifted around them so that the next door they came to led to Freddie and Connor’s bedroom. Freddie pushed open the door, and Connor was still curled up asleep, the thick, soft blanket draped over his frame. He clung to one of Freddie’s pillows like a lifeline. Freddie could feel his expression soften at the sight of him.

“It is never not weird to see you get this mushy,” Auston said, sniggering. “Have fun fucking, Bossman.”

Freddie rolled his eyes and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He could still hear Auston’s laughter through the door but ignored it; he could always give Auston some gods-awful task to complete tomorrow in retribution. He thought that the boat that crossed the river Styx needed cleaning, what with the amount of souls that throw up on the way across. Or maybe Auston should take Cerberus out for a walk. Through Tartarus. Naked. Cerberus needed a new chew toy anyways, and it should give the condemned souls a good laugh. Or an easy target.

He could think about it later. Now, though, he had his boy back.

He sat on the side of the bed and ducked down to press a kiss to Connor’s lips. “Wake up, babe,” he said, stroking through Connor’s mussed hair, smoothing his fringe down and out of his eyes. 

Connor made a soft snuffling noise and nudged into Freddie’s touch, eyes fluttering a little under their lids.

“Conn,” Freddie murmured, kissing him again. He knew Connor was awake when the man underneath him gasped and kissed back, moving to clutch onto Freddie’s wrists. He drew away when his back started to hurt, sitting up. Connor followed him, the blanket falling to pool around his waist.

“Time s’it?” Connor mumbled, hooking his arms around Freddie’s neck.

“Time like you’re used to, or here-time?”

“Either. Both.”

“Evening-time,” Freddie said, stealing another kiss. “You slept all day.”

“You wore me out.” Connor smiled, pressing his forehead to Freddie’s. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Connor yawned and stretched, pulling back a bit. “Why am I always so tired after travelling?”

“If you’re too tired for dinner, we can just--”

Connor replied with a deadpan look. “When am I  _ ever  _ too tired for food?”

Freddie barked out a laugh. “You’ve got me there. Come down to dinner with me?” 

Connor swung out of bed and scrambled for clean clothes, ending up in sweatpants and one of Freddie’s oversized sweaters.

They caught up as they ate, the two of them in the kitchen tucked away into an alcove. Connor filled Freddie in about the events of the world above, as Freddie only rarely ventured into the Overworld, and Freddie informed Connor of the Underworld’s going-ons over the past six months. They ate good food and talked, and Connor was content.

Freddie smiled at Connor over the rim of his wine glass, eyes sparkling.

“Welcome home,” he said for the millionth time, and Connor felt his soul settle just a bit.

They lingered over dinner, then wandered back to their rooms via a stroll in Persephone’s Garden. Now that Persephone had returned it was beginning to bloom, and Freddie loved the way Connor stopped to coo over his favorite annuals reawakening from their hibernation, stirring to life with Connor’s presence.

It was late when they returned to their rooms. Freddie settled in with his head on Connor’s lap as Connor picked up the book he’d clearly been reading earlier and started to read aloud.

Freddie started to drift off, belly pleasantly full and mind starting to calm.

“Don’t you think Auston and Mitch would be a cute couple?”

Freddie groaned. He’d been well on his way to a nice nap, tucked up close to his husband in the nice dim room where the words  _ trial  _ and  _ judgement  _ were banned and cuddles were a required staple.

Connor brought this up every few decades, intent on seeing his loved ones as happy as he was. When he got going on the topic, he stuck to it for years, convinced that Mitch and Auston would hit it off. The last time Connor had decided to meddle, his personal form had been a literal hippy, and he’d turned one of the lesser halls into a hothouse that specialized in god-strength THC production. Sometimes Freddie could still smell it.

“I know you’re awake, Fred,” Connor said. He stopped rubbing those nice circles into the skin behind Freddie’s ears, causing Freddie to groan pathetically and blink his eyes open. “Don’t you think they’d be good for each other?”

“Sure, Connor,” he mumbled, nudging his head back into Connor’s touch and trying to get him to start scratching his scalp again. When Connor complied, he yawned contentedly and settled back down against Connor’s chest.

His husband kept talking, probably concocting some plan to set up Mitch and Auston. Freddie allowed the noise to filter in one ear and out the other, concentrating instead on the comforting rumble of Connor’s voice. He fell asleep slowly. Connor didn’t notice until Freddie was snoring.

◉◎◈◎◉●

When living in Erebus, Connor spent more time plastered to his husband's side than he did anything else. Despite his incredibly busy schedule of distracting Freddie from doing anything useful, Connor managed to find time to bother Auston about his entirely nonexistent lovelife.

"Seriously. Mitch. Ask him out. Get a drink. Go see a movie. Take a break for the first time in six centuries, and take it with him," Connor said, leaning over Auston's attempt at the computerized filing system. Someone (probably one of the Furies) had changed the language to hieroglyphs and it was giving Auston a headache, translating the endless different meanings for each pictographic symbol. Greek was much easier to read, but English had so many delightful death descriptors. At the moment though, he'd take near anything but Ancient Sumerian cuneiform because if anything was worse than hieroglyphs, it was cuneiform.

“Aus,” Connor whined, drawing out the s sound until he was practically hissing.

“Yeah, let me think about it.” Auston looked up and raised an eyebrow, entirely unimpressed with Connor’s petulance. “Hmm, still no. He’s the god of fertility, and I’m the god of death. His purpose is to populate the planet, my purpose is to depopulate it. Somehow I think we’ll get along about as well as Freddie and your mother.”

“Don’t drag my mother into this,” Connor said lightly. He watched Auston’s struggle for a minute, then huffed and pushed Auston out of the way to readjust the language settings. He’d always been better at cuneiform than Auston, something about his love of the river delta and the plant life that blossomed there after the annual floods. The terminal beeped and suddenly actual, readable Greek characters were scrolling across the screen. “I’m just saying--you’re lonely and he needs something more solid than a party fling. It’s the perfect solution for both of you.”

“No, this is you being disgustingly married and trying to make your friends equally married.” Auston shoved a hand through his hair and set about searching for his list of planned disasters. “Have I set off an earthquake in southern California recently?”

“Define recently.”

“Past fifty years?”

“No major ones. Last big one was in the early 1900s, causing a ton of mudslides. Wreaked havoc on my crops.” Connor folded his arms. “A nice summer rain with a few river floodings would help out with their drought so my plants don’t die. I’m really fond of the California redwoods.” He lit up. “Oh, I have season passes to Yosemite National Park! You and Mitch should go camping, go to bonfires, pick up the rock climbers that fall to their deaths! You can have tent sex, and sleep under the stars! It’ll be great! Are you free next month? I think Mitch is.”

“Connor. Just because I’m Freddie’s best friend, and Mitch’s your brother, does not mean that I’m the one for him, or that he’s the one for me. All it means is that we have shit taste in friends.”

“But you like him.” Connor sat on Auston’s desk, blocking the monitor. He started shuffling through Auston’s papers. “Why not try? It’s not like you’d be wrecking any relationships, and you both need companionship.”

“I have been just  _ fine  _ for the past three thousand years, Connor. Not everyone needs to be codependently married like you and Freddie.”

“You  _ like  _ him, though, I don’t get why you’re so against introducing yourself to him.”

“There’s a difference between finding someone attractive--much less the god of  _ fertility _ , who I’m fairly certain is recognized as being among the most attractive person in the universe, after Aphrodite--and actually getting along with them, and I don’t think he and I would get along.”

“But you would get along.” Connor was honest to god pouting right now, and Auston was beginning to wonder how mad Freddie would get if he banished Connor to Tartarus temporarily. “You just refuse to actually  _ talk  _ to him.”

“Connor. No. Go bother your husband.”

Connor huffed, hit a key on Auston’s keyboard. Instantly, the text changed from lovely, readable Greek to a random collection of symbols and syllables.

“The fuck is this?”

The god of summer shrugged and smiled sunnily. “Quechua.”

“Fucking  _ Quechua _ ? Connor! How the fuck did you do this?”

Connor laughed, entirely too proud of himself. “I’ll turn it back if you agree to meet Mitch!”

“It doesn’t even have a  _ written form _ ! What did you do, have the computer spell it fucking  _ phonetically _ ?”

“Why do you think I chose it?”

Auston shot Connor a dirty look. “I am the god of  _ death _ . I’m fairly certain I could put you in a deep sleep for a couple of centuries.”

“You’d kill off most of the Earth’s population and go into work overload, and that wouldn’t be pretty.” Connor smiled innocently. “Also, Freddie would kick your ass for even trying.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Promise you’ll come with me to meet Mitch and I’ll fix your computer. I’ll put it in whatever language you want, and fix it so it gives you whatever language you want, whenever you want it.”

Auston considered it. He could just agree, and Connor would stop bothering him, or he could tell Connor to piss off, and Connor would go pout at Freddie, who would yell at Auston for making Connor upset, and his computer would still be in goddamn bloody  _ Quechua _ , so he’d have to go track down one of the maintenance goblins, and it’d have to be one who actually spoke the damn language well enough to translate the phonetics, and they’ve have to make sure it was the right fucking  _ dialect of the stupid language without a written form, how did those languages even still exist _ , and it’d get around that Auston was incompetent at his job, and then souls would start being difficult when Thanatos showed up to escort them wherever they needed to go, and his job was already a nightmare enough, and this was not worth Connor trying to play matchmaker.

Auston sulked. “Fine. I’ll go meet the fucking god of fertility. But don’t go whining to me or Freddie when it doesn’t work out like you want it to.”

Connor grinned beatifically and tapped at the keyboard. “English, Spanish, or Greek?”

“French,” Auston said, just to be contrary.

“Did you know that in French, an orgasm is called la petite mort, or  _ the little death _ ?” Connor chirped, smug as a cat in cream now that he’d gotten his way. He typed something out, and the screen blinked, returning to something understandable. “Maybe you’ll be having a few  _ little deaths  _ with Mitch.”

“I am going to spend the next decade planning a very creative death for you.”

“Aww, you’re so sweet.” Connor leaned over and kissed Auston on the cheek. “Also, don’t you think the extreme heat in Australia is already excessive?” He pointed to the catalogue of deaths on the screen, raising an eyebrow.

“I used up my nuclear disaster on Japan a few years back,” Auston grumbled, still sulking. “Some wildfires would be fun.”

“You have over a hundred deaths by heat stroke listed for next month,” Connor said, unimpressed. “Australia has some of the most poisonous animals on the planet, use some of them.”

“I hate you.”

“Mitch is going to be at a party three days from now, and I’m going. You’re coming with. Dress human-ish.”

“I’m going to show up in a monk’s robe,” Auston told him. “And a pair of bright pink Crocs.”

“No, you’re not. Wear those jeans that make your ass look good, the black ones?” Connor bounced up to his feet. “See you in three days.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Connor darted out the door, presumably to go find his husband and distract him from his work. 

Auston rolled his eyes and went back to his computer--or, he tried to.

Someone had overgrown it with ivy when he hadn’t been looking.

“ _ Connor _ !”

Somewhere in the depths of the Underworld, Persephone was laughing.

◉◎◈◎◉●

“You’re really smug,” Freddie said suspiciously, eyeing his husband. “What did you do?”

Connor shrugged, casting his eyes upward. “I...made a suggestion. And Auston decided to follow it.”

“Dammit, Connor, are you still trying to make Auston fuck your brother?”

“It’s gonna work. Auston will be in a much better mood. Mitch is good for him. I can feel it in my sensibilities.” Connor crossed the room to climb into Freddie’s lap, making soft, innocent puppy eyes. “Are you mad about it?”

Freddie tsked, fitting their mouths together in a kiss. “Never able to be mad at you,” he murmured. Connor smiled, kissing back. “I’m just worried how hurt you’ll be when it doesn’t work out.”

“ _ If _ it doesn’t work out,” Connor corrected, sitting up straighter. “Except it  _ will  _ work. They’d be good for each other.”

“You don’t know that.” Freddie smoothed his hands down Connor’s back, thumbing at the skin where his shirt had ridden up. “Opposites don’t always attract.”

“We attracted.”

“We’re not as opposite as people like to claim,” Freddie countered, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s the six thousand years as a married couple speaking, dear.” Connor sighed and rested his forehead against Freddie’s, playing with the chain of the necklace his husband wore. “No, I mean. Auston is...lonely, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Don’t lie, you know the last time he was even involved with anyone was with that girl in the  _ thirteenth century _ .”

Freddie hummed. “When he was in his Norse form?”

“I think so. But still--seven centuries is a long time to be alone.”

“He’s not that alone. He’s got us.”

“I’m gone half the year, and you’re as busy as he is. That’s part-time friendship, not romance. Not  _ love _ .”

“He’s the god of death. I don’t think he exactly needs love to survive.”

“And you’re the king of hell, and you think that’s any different?”

“Okay, point to you. But why your brother? Why not one of the nymphs, or a mortal, or something? Why Dionysus?”

“ _ Mitch _ .”

“Okay, why  _ Mitch _ ?”

Connor smiled. “Mitch’s as lonely as Auston is.” He squirmed a bit, settled so that he was a bit more comfortable. “God of fertility, yes, but he’s been having flings for four millennia, and no one really wants to settle down with him. Other than Triptolemus and you know that wouldn't end all that well.”

“And you think Auston would want to?”

“I’m not done. Mitch’s lonely, and Auston’s lonely. They’re also the only ones who’d really consider each other long term--mortals die too quickly, and other than nymphs and the Furies and the like, there’s not really anyone else long-lived enough to make it worthwhile.”

“So you’re shoving them at each other because they’re both lonely and old?” Freddie snorted. “I think you’re overestimating your matchmaking capabilities.”

Connor shrugged loosely, rolling with the movement. “Mitch needs to settle and Auston needs to get out more. They’d look good together, and if it doesn’t work out-- _ if _ \--they don’t exactly run in the same circles, other than us. Auston thinks Mitch is attractive, and Mitch loves everyone. At the very least Auston gets laid and maybe he’ll be less uptight about his precious filing system.”

“Or you could set off an eternal war between the gods of conception and extermination and end up causing a global population crisis,” Freddie said. Connor smacked him in the side of the face gently.

“They’re reasonable people, they wouldn’t.”

“Are we forgetting the population spikes of the twentieth century?”

“That was at least  _ half  _ Aphrodite and Ares’ fault. You can’t blame Mitch for that. Or, Auston, really. And, to be fair, more babies weren’t being born--less babies were dying and more people were living longer.”

“The bubonic plague?”

“You know as well as I do that Auston had a running bet with Hephaestus and Ares, and he won it fair and square.”

“The American seventies as a whole?”

“That was a cultural movement, and Mitch had to work twice as hard because of the Pill, poor boy.” Connor brightened. “All the more reason for him to find someone with which he can settle down. He needs someone he can relax with.”

“You want the god of fertility to  _ relax  _ with the god of death.”

“If I remember correctly, the king of hell does a lot of relaxing with the goddess of spring,” Connor said, and got distracted with Freddie’s mouth for a longer time than he’d like to admit.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Freddie asked later, watching his husband (un)dress for bed with steady, solemn eyes.

Connor nodded. “Never been surer.”

“Then I trust you,” Freddie said, and smiled. “Auston’s going to kill you.”

“Oh, I know.” Connor grinned toothily, looking for all the world like one of Freddie’s demonspawn. Freddie was all of a sudden struck by how much Connor had learned in the Underworld over the millennia. “I’m looking forward to it.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

“So I heard you’re going on a date,” Freddie said, not bothering to knock at Auston’s door.

“It’s not a date.” Auston rolled his eyes, closed the files he was sorting through. “Apparently, it’s a party.”

“Your idea of a party or Connor’s idea of a party?”

“What do you think?” Auston asked, raising an eyebrow.

Freddie winced. “You know, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“Yeah, and then Connor sets all my computers to hieroglyphs again and passive-aggressively grumbles at you for a few decades, which means you get a bit passive-aggressive towards me on his behalf, and then no one’s happy. It’s a party, not the end of the world.” He rolled his eyes. “You coming with me today?”

“Yeah, I figured it might be fun to get out.”

Auston got up from his desk, stretching. His spine popped as he twisted one way, then the other.

“Mortal bodies make the strangest sounds,” he said, bouncing up onto his toes. “But naps, man. Godly powers have nothing on naps.”

“Tell me about it.” Freddie’s posture was looser than it had been in months. He’d spent three weeks straight in his Hades form this year, much to Auston’s annoyance. Hades had no time for Auston or any mortal forms, and refused to acknowledge Hypnos and Thanatos as different aspects of the same deity. It gave Auston a headache switching back and forth between two of his forms just to have a single goddamn conversation with his boss.

When Hades had melted back into Freddie, he’d been sheepish about it, but sheepish didn’t make up for a three-week migraine.

Today, Freddie was wearing mirrored sunglasses, and Auston reached for his own. The Underworld brightened with Persephone’s presence, the palace in particular. After the annual 6 months of near-pitch darkness, it hurt to readjust to any degree of light down here.

“You seem more grounded than usual,” Auston said as he followed Freddie out the door, pulling his soul-collecting kit off the coat-rack on the way. “I mean, usually you’re ditzy as fuck for the first few weeks Connor is back. Last time I saw you this weird, Victorian hemlines had just come into fashion.”

“Something weird is going on up above,” Freddie admitted. “Not on Earth. Higher above. They’re keeping me out of the loop, which makes me…”

“Nervous?” Auston supplied.

“Very much so.”

“Connor have any idea what’s going on?”

“Haven’t had a chance to ask him, but honestly--I don’t think they’d have told him anything. You know none of the others trust Persephone after they married me.”

“Huh. Want me to talk to some of my guys, see if they know anything?”

“If you can do it quietly, sure.”

Auston gave Freddie a deadpan look. “Freddie, I’m Death. No one is quieter than me.”

Freddie snorted. “I can’t shake the feeling that it has to do with Connor’s mother.”

The rounds were relatively light that day, but Auston could see why Freddie wanted the company. The Underworld itself was shifting to accommodate Persephone’s presence, and every little tweak must have been calling Freddie back to Connor’s side. Without Auston there to keep Freddie focused, Freddie probably would have already played hooky, and then spent the next week bitching about the backlog.

“Why are you even doing any of this personally?” Auston asked, when he’d collected a handful of more difficult souls from the Australian mainland and was opening a portal to South America. “You can divide your attention infinitely. You could be here  _ and _ with Connor.”

Freddie flushed. “He says he can tell when I’m focusing on Hades business when I’m with him.”

“...dude. You didn’t.”

“It only happened a few times!”

Auston shoved at Freddie. “A few times is more than enough, Fred. I’m eternally single and I know that.”

“Yeah, well,” Freddie grumbled. “If Connor has his way you won’t be single for long.”

Auston’s eyes widened, remembering the party Connor was dragging him to that evening. “Fuck.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

“Stop being such a whiny baby,” Connor said. He dragged Auston behind him, then stopped in front of the door and gave Auston a once over. “And fix your hair.”

“What do you mean,  _ fix my hair _ ? My hair looks fine.”

Connor raised an eyebrow, then licked both of his palms and mussed Auston’s hair. Auston made a very unmanly noise of protest, squirming out of Connor’s range. ”Stop Mom-ing me!”

“I’m not going to take you to meet the love of your life when you look like you’ve been living under a bridge for three millennia.”

“Not the love of my life,” Auston protested, but Connor was having none of it.

“Not yet,” he practically hissed, eyes bright. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.” Concentrating, Connor opened a portal. He stepped through and immediately stepped back. “Um. Not that one.”

Auston peeked through and blanched. “You opened a portal above an active  _ volcano _ ?” Volcanoes alone couldn’t kill them, but they would sure as hell hurt.

“I’m working on it,” Connor said defensively, and tried again. This time, the portal opened above an ocean. Judging by the ice floes, they were somewhere off the coast of Iceland, or maybe Northern Canada. “Fuck.”

Auston pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where are we going?”

“No, I can do this.”

“Weren’t you the one who said we were going to be late?”

Connor pouted. “...yes.”

“Give me the address of where we’re going.”

Sulkily, Connor handed over the slip of paper and pouted as Auston opened a perfect portal. “I’m not doing this because I want to go to the party,” Auston said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m doing this because otherwise Freddie’s going to have to give us a rescue party again and I don’t want to spend my evening in  _ Siberia _ .”

Connor flounced through the portal, Auston following behind him.

They stepped out into the crisp evening air, with Connor still leading and Auston petulantly trailing behind. Connor walked up to the house like he owned it, taking Auston by the bicep and pushing him through the crowd of people.

It was easy, really, to pick Mitch out of the masses. He was the center, and everyone else gravitated towards him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just cut-off jeans and a myriad of glow stick jewelry. The flashing strobe lights made him look and feel fey in presence. 

Mitch didn’t really seem to have any discrimination about who he was rubbing against. A girl with blue hair grabbed him by the hips to pull him in for a kiss, and Mitch arched into it like it was the best present anyone had ever given him. He was fucking sexy, and Auston was fucked.

“Are you gonna eat him, or are you gonna go give him a little warning first?” Connor asked.

Auston ignored him in favor of moving a bit closer. He was enamoured. Connor hadn’t seen that sort of look on Auston’s face since Freddie put in the computerized filing system for the Asphodel Meadows.

Mitch was the backbone of the party, laughing and drinking and guiding humans to partners. He’d never say anything to any of them, allowing his work to be a happy accident, or so the mortals would remember it that way. Mitch would bump into one person, and pull another forward so that they all could grind into each other on the dancefloor. He’d get them to kiss, and then he’d slip away to do it all again.

For a very long time, Connor had wondered himself if he’d been in love with Mitch. It wasn’t hard to be caught in the shine of his eyes or the sinuous way he moved. He was more Summer than Connor could ever hope to achieve. He wasn’t plants or flowers or sunshine. Mitch was the dry taste of tequila on the beach, or the hot slide of skin-on-skin at a bonfire party. He was the flirty golden party goer that brought life and left happiness. No one remembered his face, but his presence was never forgotten. Mitch was arguably the most flawless deity ever created, and Connor would say it out loud if not for the fact that Aphrodite would slay him where he stood.

“I want to ruin him,” said Auston softly.

Connor laughed, snagging shot glasses off the nearest tray. “What’s stopping you?”

Auston blinked a few times, seeming to ponder that. He tore his gaze away from Mitch’s slim, grinding form to glare at Connor before taking the drinks out of Connor’s hands and tossing them both back. “You’re too happy about this,” he said, moving to find more liquor. 

“I don’t know why you don’t always automatically assume that I’m right. I’m always right.” Connor wanted to wilt under Auston’s eyes, but stayed strong. He should have brought Freddie, probably. “Come  _ on _ , just go talk to him.”

Auston furrowed his eyebrows and made what Connor affectionately referred to as The Monkey Face. Auston always argued that Death did not make cute monkey faces. Connor always argued back that everyone made cute monkey faces. “He’s pretty. I’m not pretty.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” exclaimed Connor. “You could make someone cream their panties from ten paces out with one of your angry glares. Not pretty, my ass. Try a walking fucking sex god. I can’t keep my nymphs in check when you’re around.” He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before grabbing Auston by the arm and dragging him through the crowd.

Auston dug in his heels the whole way. “I’m gonna throw you in  _ Tartarus _ ,” he hissed.

“Freddie will bail me out,” Connor said, completely unconcerned about Auston’s anger. “Stop being such a baby.” He kept tugging Auston through the throng of people, ducking past couples flirting and a table set up for beer pong. And then, before Auston could really react, Connor shoved him into the center of a group of dancers. He was immediately absorbed, forced into a sandwich of terribly dirty dancing.

The look Auston shot him was positively  _ venomous _ . It made Connor happy.

Connor grabbed Mitch’s wrist, tugging at him. Mitch went, laughing as the girl he’d been dancing with slotted in with a new partner, a pretty girl with equally bright hair.

“Connor!” he yelled over the din, face lighting up at the sight of his friend. He ducked in and pressed a quick kiss to Connor’s lips before latching onto his side, sweaty and radiating joy. “I thought you were in the Underworld for another four months?”

“Technically yes,” Connor replied. He and Mitch wove their way to a less crowded area, where Connor could still keep an eye on Auston. He wouldn’t quite put it past him to make an escape attempt. “I thought I’d pop to the surface for an evening. How’re you, Mitch?”

“Fantastic.” Mitch beamed, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “So, what brings you to my party? I’m assuming it’s not just for a hookup, considering how into your husband you are.”

“You’re not wrong.” Connor took a deep breath. “I’m, uh.” He shrugged, laughed a little. “So you know Thanatos?”

“The death god?” Mitch had a calculating look on his face; Connor had learned through experience that Mitch usually knew more than he let on. “Guy you came with, yeah? Dark hair, fantastic ass, looks like he’s not quite sure how to have fun?”

“He’s also an absolutely wonderful person, and I know that he’s got a nice, large dick because I know people who have seen him naked before. He enjoys Scrubs, killing people, and chocolate cream pie. He’s had like, a six-century dry spell, and he’s lonely, and  _ you’re  _ lonely, don’t fucking try and tell me that you aren’t, and--”

“Connor,” Mitch cut in, smiling. “I’ll fuck him. He’s ridiculously sexy and he’s been undressing me with his eyes since you got here.”

“You would?” Connor was thrown, having expected to need to argue more in Auston’s favor to convince Mitch.

“He’s pretty and sad, and pretty people should never be sad.” Mitch started heading back towards the party, having spotted Auston trying to extricate himself from the group of dancers. “Besides--mortals get boring after awhile. Olympians are  _ always  _ more fun, even if they happen to be death gods.”

Connor gave a pleased hum. He watched Mitch slink into the crowd and press up against an already flustered-looking Auston. This chalked up as a job well done. They should name their first kid after him. 

Hugging his arms around himself, Connor looked around at the people enjoying the party. He made the conclusion that he should be enjoying himself as well, but knew he wouldn’t be able to unless it was with Freddie. Connor snagged a red solo cup full of the clearest, flattest liquid he could find (if it happened to be neat vodka, so much the better) and sat down on the nearest flat surface before murmuring a quick incantation over the cup. 

Freddie’s face shimmered into view, and Connor smiled. 

“You in trouble?” Freddie asked immediately, forehead creasing with worry.

Connor huffed. “I’m not always in trouble when I call you from the surface.”

“You are at least ninety percent of the time.” Freddie visibly relaxed. “What did you need?”

“I’m scrying you from a cup full of vodka at a house party because I want you to come and have fun with me.” Connor poked his lip out. “Please?”

“Babe, I’m really busy right now and--”

“ _ Freddie _ . I want you to come get drunk and dirty dance with me and then fuck me up against the wall. We literally cannot die. Your busy shit can wait a few hours.”

Freddie’s laugh meant that Connor’s win was assured. “You know how to strike a damn good bargain.”

“I’ve learned a few tricks. Wear something sexy, okay? Don’t come in your sweatpants and your Mario Kart shirt.”

“Have a little faith. I’ll see you in a minute.” Freddie’s face disappeared. The vodka looked the same as it did before and his scrying spells didn't usually poison anything too permanently, so Connor took a hazard guess and figured he probably wouldn't die. He drained the cup and set it down with a smug little smile. 

◉◎◈◎◉●

Mitch didn’t waste time. He slipped through the crowd and looped his arms around Auston’s neck before kissing him slow and dirty. 

Auston’s hands immediately went to bracket Mitch’s waist. He was  _ strong _ , and kissed back like Mitch was making him lose his mind. When they broke the kiss, Auston’s eyes were flat black. It was so familiar that Mitch’s chest ached.

“Hi,” Mitch said breathlessly, smiling. “It’s nice to see you.”

Closing his eyes, Auston swallowed and exhaled before looking at Mitch again. His gaze travelled down to the necklace made out of onyx and ivory around Mitch’s neck. It glimmered, absorbing and reflecting the glow from Mitch’s other necklaces. “You liked my gift,” he murmured, leaning in to press a sweet kiss just above Mitch’s collarbone. “I hoped you would.”

Mitch sighed happily and carded his fingers through Auston’s hair. “It’s lovely. I always enjoy when you give me things.”

Auston actually, physically  _ growled _ . He palmed Mitch’s ass before lifting him up and carrying him across the room without any regard for who he bumped into or pissed off in the process. He met Mitch halfway for yet another delightfully heated kiss while they made their way up the stairs. 

It was a wild adventure, trying to find an empty room. Auston held Mitch up with one arm while he opened doors and shut them on a bunch of shit neither of them really wanted to see. Mitch took this opportunity to suck little bites into Auston’s neck, paying special attention to the straining tendon. 

By the grace of some god (probably Connor), the last room they checked was deserted. Auston dropped Mitch on the bed and slid up between his legs so they could kiss and grind and carry on like two horny teenagers. 

“Too many clothes, Auston, come on.” Mitch tugged at Auston’s faded black tshirt, making a delighted noise when he stopped and sat back to strip it off. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”

Auston tossed his shirt to the side and shot Mitch a smirk. “Yeah?” 

Mitch pushed Auston on his back so that his fucking gorgeous body was kiss-accessible. He laved rather enthusiastically at Auston’s nipples, taking pride in the noises he was rewarded with.

“You’re so fuckin’ pretty, Mitch,” Auston breathed, pushing his hand through Mitch’s previously carefully styled mess of hair and  _ tugging _ . 

“You gonna show me?” Mitch asked. “Come on, Auston.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

"Why didn't you tell me about him sooner?" Mitch hissed. Connor jumped about eight feet in the air, shrieking in a very undignified fashion. " _ Connor _ ."

"I take it the party went well?" Connor said, once his heart rate had returned to normal.

"In all the time you spent rambling on about fucking Freddie, you couldn't have mentioned Auston  _ once _ ?"

"I mentioned him!"

"You mentioned Thanatos." Mitch's eyes were wide. "You never mentioned  _ Auston _ ."

"You should've come visited," Connor protested, settling at his desk. Mitch sat on Connor's lap, nuzzled into his neck. "You'd've met him."

"You live in the Underworld, it's not really my scene," Mitch said dismissively, and bit at Connor's collarbone sullenly. "But  _ Auston _ ."

"Did you come here just to whine about the god of death and make my husband jealous?" Connor asked, a little in awe. "I did not expect this plan to go  _ nearly  _ so well."

Mitch rolled his eyes, squirming a little in Connor’s lap. "Can we talk about Auston, now?"

"I thought that was what we were doing," Connor said, but Mitch was already off, describing Auston in eye-watering detail.

It took almost half an hour for Connor to get a word in edgewise.

"You sound like me when I first met Hades," Connor teased when Mitch finally ceased his steady gush of Auston's praises. He set down his pencil--while Mitch had rambled on, he'd been working on a new strain of hybrid rose, planning on gifting it to a dedicated gardener and good friend of his. "Am I allowed to say 'I told you so'?"

"You can say I told you so," Mitch sighed. He curled himself up a little smaller, stilling in Connor's lap. "I don't think he likes me back, though."

"Auston?"

Mitch nodded, curls tickling at Connor's collarbone. "He didn't even ask for my number, after."

"I don't know what’s going on with that," Connor admitted. "I know he likes you, but. He’s also notoriously bad at losing his phone when he doesn’t want to deal with something.”

"But he didn't even try to set up another date," Mitch whined. "Or portal call me. It's been three days."

Connor blinked. "Mitch," he said slowly. "Auston hasn't been on a date in about half a millennia. Last time he asked someone out, negotiation for a bride price was the norm. It probably hasn't even  _ occurred _ to him to call you. Knowing him, he’s probably convinced that hooking up with you ruined everything and you’ll sic your godly parents on him.”

“So  _ I _ should call him?”

“That’d probably be for the best. Or I could just set you up on a blind date or something?”

In what was either proof that coincidence was what made the world turn or a very cruel joke from the universe, Auston himself popped his head into the office.

"Connor, have you seen--"

Auston stopped short at the sight of Mitch, stammered out an apology and fled as fast as possible.

Mitch gestured angrily at the door.

"He's just nervous?" Connor tried.

Mitch sighed, petulantly picking at the hem of his shirt. “I’m so confused, Connor. The way we had sex, it was like he was  _ claiming _ me. I’ve got bruises everywhere. He came inside of me three fucking times. I mean, I know I’m not good at keeping proper, healthy relationships, but doesn’t an assful of jizz warrant at least a cup of fucking coffee?”

Continuing his work, Connor quirked his mouth to the side. “I mean, my first date with Freddie was at an old battleground in the deepest recesses of what’s now the Alaskan Tundra. There were unrest spirits possessing my juniper nymphs. He-” Connor cut himself off with a smile. “He fixed everything. I remember being absolutely struck by how handsome he was, how easily the spirits bent to his will. And he wasn’t cruel about it, either, but I feel like he was showing off a little bit. Thanatos came to collect the souls, and Hades stayed with me to fix the forest. Afterwards, he told me that I was more beautiful than the moon itself. He kissed my hand and created the Belladonna plant for me.”

“Isn’t that used as a poison? To like, kill people?”

Connor blushed. “Yeah. He’s always been a sap.”

“Please tell me Auston isn’t going to make me something that kills people.”

“I cannot altogether guarantee that.” Connor shrugged when Mitch glared at him. Connor carefully folded up the drawing, flicking a hand and sending it to rest in a pile of almost-completed projects. "It's a sign of affection."

"It's death!" Mitch yelped.

" _ He's _ death," Connor corrected. "And he's out of practice with flirting." He glanced up, a smile quirking at his lips. "At least he's not leaving you dead mice."

"He's not a cat. Is he?"

"Only when he's feeling Egyptian," Connor said absently. "Or when he's watched mummy movies too much recently."

"If I find any dead mice anywhere I'm never talking to you again."

"Remind me to fill your bed with mice, then." Connor yelped when Mitch smacked his arm. "Fine, no mice!"

"Am I seriously going to get death as a present?"

"Death's his specialty," Connor said, and sighed. "Mitch. I told you, he's out of his depth. Has anything weird been happening around you lately?"

"Other than the god of death not calling me back, no."

"I meant more like--are humans you get close to dying, are you running into aspects of him more often than normal, has Aphrodite started giggling when you're nearby?"

“What the fuck do you mean, Aphrodite giggling?” Mitch asked. “Has she said anything to you? I swear to  _ Hades _ if Aphrodite has been fucking with my love life, I’m gonna rip out her hair, Ares be damned.” 

Connor rolled his eyes so hard that Mitch thought they might just roll out of his head and into the next century. “I mean, have you been seeing his different facets? Like Hypnos, or Thanatos. I have information on good faith that Thanatos thinks your eyes are pretty. Hypnos forgets shit all the time. It’s easy to identify what Auston’s been doing based on what god-form he’s in.”

Mitch furrowed his eyebrows. “I mean, no more than usual.”

“No more than-- _ what do you mean no more than usual _ ?”

Shrugging, Mitch looked down to examine his fingernails. “I see Thanatos and Hypnos all the time. Hypnos gave me a handmade dreamcatcher once.”

Connor tilted his head to the side. “You sure it was Hypnos?”

“Yeah. He looks just like Auston, except he’s got white hair, lots of tattoos, solid brown eyes, and kind of an earthy vibe? It’s normal for him to give me gifts. I was talking more along the lines of Auston himself.”

"Mitch. Hypnos is notoriously shy. He rarely ever lets himself be seen. I've met him maybe a dozen times in all the years I've lived here." Connor raised his eyebrows. "And you see him regularly? Enough for him to give you gifts?"

Mitch blinked. "It's just a dreamcatcher."

"One of the kitschy ones people who know nothing about actual dreamcatchers get? Nothing special about it at  _ all _ ?"

"Not really. I mean, it works," Mitch said, digging into his pocket and producing a small blown glass globe. It looked like it was made out of spun sugar, it was so delicate-looking, but if Mitch was carrying it in his pocket, it couldn’t be nearly as fragile as it looked. It was easily one of the most beautiful things Connor had ever seen. "It catches my dreams and lets me watch them the next day."

"Do you know how many people Hypnos has denied that to? And he just  _ gave _ it to you, as a gift?"

“I don’t see what the big deal is.” Mitch ran his fingertips over the carefully forged glass. “It was just something nice he did for me.”

"Mitch, you're missing the point. Zeus himself ordered him to make one, and Hypnos refused. And you've just got it in your  _ pocket _ ?"

Mitch held it close to his chest, eyes shifting into something defensive. “I take it with me everywhere I go. It’s mine.”

Connor groaned. "You're being deliberately dense. How long have you been seeing Hypnos and Thanatos?"

Humming in thought, Mitch tapped the dreamcatcher against his mouth. “A couple of millennia, I suppose. Thanatos came first. He just likes to talk to me. I think it’s because everyone else is afraid of him.”

"You have chats with the god of death, in his god-form. And you've been having these chats with him for a couple of millennia. How is he not contacting you, exactly?"

Mitch closed his eyes and heaved a world-ending sigh. “Thanatos and Hypnos are forms that Auston likes to hide behind because he’s too much of a coward to actually talk to me face to face.”

Connor fish mouthed, trying to wrap his head around that logic. "Have you considered that  _ Auston _ is a form of  _ Thanatos _ ?"

“I’ve been thinking about this shit for damn near three thousand years now, Connor. If you’re still deluding yourself with the idea that Thanatos is still the dominant facet of the entity of Death, I don’t know why you’re lecturing me over who I can and cannot receive gifts from.”

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Connor muttered. "Let me get this straight--Death has been giving you extravagant and potentially world-altering presents for thousands of years, you've been having long, friendly chats with him, and you never thought that he might possibly be courting you?"

“Of course he’s been courting me!” Mitch near-shouted. “I don’t fucking know what to do about it, you prawn!”

Connor took a deep breath. "I'm going to murder the both of you," he said calmly. "I've been trying to set you up for three fucking  _ millennia  _ and neither of you thought to  _ mention any of this  _ to me? Secondly, you're just as capable of calling him, so either call him or stop whining."

Folding in on himself, Mitch rubbed his face back into Connor’s neck. “S’not that easy,” he mumbled. “I’m not good with complicated emotions.”

"It really is that easy," Connor said, and stroked through Mitch's hair. "You know he's interested, he's literally been flirting for centuries by now. Just scry him, say hi. You know more about dating than he does."

“I don’t want to just date him. I...I know what love feels like. I know how to love someone. I love you, I love Freddie, I love my satyrs and every single baby I birth. I feel so much more for Auston. He fills my chest up with things that I don’t know how to feel.”

“You said you’d never met Auston before!” Connor looked up at Mitch, eyebrows furrowed.

“I  _ haven’t  _ met Auston before. Thanatos, though, I do know.” Mitch shrugged helplessly. The movement jostled Connor. “I said it was complicated.”

Swallowing, Connor rested back against Mitch’s chest. “I’m confused. I never did like complicated stuff.” He picked at the hem of his shirt, fingertips worrying around the holes and jagged rips. “What kind of history do you have with him?” he asked.

“Thanatos and I cross paths sometimes,” Mitch said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Life and death, yeah? It happens. Sometimes we talk. I saw them a lot whenever the influenza came around and babies had to go. It’s usually Thanatos, but. I see Hypnos around. Sometimes they give me gifts.”

It made Mitch nervous to think about how saying all of this out loud would make it  _ real _ . He’d have to confront it. He’d have to talk to Auston and not run away from him and probably decide whether they should do this, or settle on never interacting again. 

“Elaborate,” said Connor.

“We talk?” Mitch blinked. “Nothing world-altering, but we have this stupid, long running knock-knock joke competition.” He shrugged again, feeling like it was the only movement he was capable of making. “He told me this story about George the Second about eight million times, about how he died when his privy fell off the castle wall.”

Connor wrinkled his nose in confusion. “Death tells you knock-knock jokes?”

Mitch bit his lip and looked up at the ceiling. “Yeah. I...he makes me laugh,” he said, sounding lame even to his own ears. “I tell him about all the times something goes wrong, like how no one ever tells me when something in the fabric of time changes, and then I find out that a baby that I personally helped birth and watched grow up is supposed to turn out to be a serial killer. He just, he talks to me, Connor.”

Connor only watched Mitch with steady eyes. He had at least stopped flickering around the edges. His weight was solid and warm and welcoming, like Mitch being in Connor’s lap was the only thing keeping him rooted to the Earth.

“He gets it,” Mitch continued. “The cycle. He takes them back to Hades, and I bring them back to the Overworld. He’s the flip side of the scale, yeah? We’ve always danced around each other, we talk, we give each other gifts, we give help when it isn’t asked for. I’m so scared of him, sometimes.” 

“He  _ is  _ Death,” Connor said dryly, and that was the Connor Mitch was more familiar with. “No one in their right mind isn’t scared of him.”

Mitch huffed, feeling irritated. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’m not scared of the Death part, I’ve heard his jokes about elephant ears, okay, it’s hard to be scared of someone who makes bad jokes regularly. I meant more like...” Mitch paused, searching for the right words. “He’s not like you or my satyrs. Flirting with him feels more like flirting with intent. And  _ that  _ scares me.”

Connor laughed softly, reaching up to prod at the tip of Mitch’s nose. “You’re scared of falling in love with him, baby.”

“I  _ am not _ in love with him.”

“Mitch, you sound like me when I first met Hades.”

“I remember when you met Hades. Having a boyfriend meant you wouldn’t tell me about your affairs. I’m so glad we got past that.” Frowning, Mitch picked at his jeans peevishly. “You falling head over heels with the King of the Dead has nothing to do with me and Auston.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “You’re being intentionally dense.”

A knock at the door caused Mitch to jump. He was fully prepared to cast a spell to send away whatever shade had come in search of Persephone, but a familiar voice drifted through the wood. “Connor?” Freddie called. “You alright?”

Connor glanced at Mitch furtively, and shook his head. “Just chatting with Mitch, Freddie.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “So I should...probably go find Auston and talk him out of whatever embarrassing thing he’s about to do then?”

“That would be a good idea, baby.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

Auston really needed to remind someone that he wasn’t a courier. First Freddie kept asking him to escort Connor to and from the Overworld--which wasn’t awful, Connor was good company and Freddie couldn’t exactly leave in the way Auston and Connor did--but then he had to run messages to the nymphs in Connor’s absence and now he was running messages from Demeter down to her son, and he was just  _ done  _ with the whole messenger-courier deal. They should contact Hermes for that, really. It didn’t help that Demeter was in a profound strop this year and that one of the nymphs--a cute little blond who was spending his days wandering through the gardens of Toronto and calling himself Kasperi--was being extra nosy about Connor and Mitch’s whereabouts.

He wandered into the throne room, sulking a little.

It took a minute for Freddie and Connor to notice him, wrapped up in their god-forms as they were. They were twinned sources of power, each on a throne, issuing judgement. Hades noticed Auston loitering in the back of the room and nodded at him; the god-forms melted away.

Auston wasn’t surprised in the slightest that Connor wasn’t even on his own throne, but rather in Freddie’s lap. He was even less surprised that Freddie’s throne was practically covered in vines and flowers, and that Connor’s  _ crown  _ was made of flowers and what looked like bird bones.

“What’s up, Auston?” Connor asked, looking entirely too comfortable and pleased with himself. He had hickies all down the column of his neck--Freddie wasn’t much better.

“Connor, please call your mom,” Auston said plaintively. Connor’s eyes widened as Freddie stifled a snort. “She keeps showing up at my pickups, and she doesn’t seem to get that I’m the  _ god of death _ . She should really be asking Hermes to be sending messages. Not  _ me _ .”

"She's not," Connor groaned. "She didn't."

"You've been here for a month," Freddie pointed out, leaning back against his throne, crossing his legs at the ankle and jostling Connor a little. "I'm amazed she waited this long."

"I'll call her," Connor said, face buried in his hands. "Actually, wait."

"What?"

"I'll call my mom if you call Mitch, Auston." Connor sat up, grinning. Freddie sat up a little in his throne, the smirk on his face a faint echo of Connor’s own. Auston hoped their bloody flower crowns withered and died. "Then you don't have to put up with my mom, and you'll probably even get a date out of it."

“No,” Auston said immediately. “Not a chance.”

“Then I guess my mom’ll keep meeting you at pickups,” Connor said airily.

Auston huffed. “Seriously, Connor?”

Connor and Freddie exchanged one of their married-couple looks. Auston  _ hated  _ their married-couple looks.

"You like Mitch," Connor said, getting up from Freddie's lap. "I know you hit it off." He followed Auston out of the judgement chamber, into one of the little anterooms. 

“Stop badgering me about the Mitch thing.”

“But you like him,” Connor said, frustrated. The edges of the hall started growing ivy, thick ropes of it climbing the walls. “Why won’t you let yourself  _ like  _ someone?”

“I like plenty of people. Cerebus, for example, is my favorite.”

“Cerebus is a  _ dog _ .”

“An immortal dog who doesn’t try to set me up on dates,” Auston said pointedly. “And all three of his heads make good conversation.”

“Careful, or I might set you up on a date with Cerberus and Charon rather than one with Mitch.”

Auston made a face. “Please don’t set me up on dates with anyone.”

“Mitch told me some interesting things,” Connor said, instead of stopping. “Was I really setting you up, or were you being a dick and keeping secrets from me?”

Auston immediately flushed a deep red. “Fuck.”

“Not even denying it, huh?” Connor took a step forward. Auston took a much smaller step backwards. “He’s scared you don’t like him.”

“What? No! Of course I do, he’s just--he’s life. He’s literally life, and I’m literally death. There’s no match to be made there.”

Connor’s eyes softened around the corners. “So Freddie and I have no match?”

“You’re different.”

“ _ How _ ?”

“You fundamentally altered the laws of the universe to be together,” Auston said flatly. “And nearly set off another Titanomachy in the process.”

Freddie came up behind them and wrapped an arm around Connor’s waist. “Heard my name.”

“Connor thinks Dionysus and I are the next you two,” Auston said, hoping for an ally. “He forgets that your marriage includes literal centuries of regular pining.”

“Hey now,” Freddie said mildly, but drew Connor a little closer. “Let him alone, Conn. Auston needs to make his own decisions on his own time.”

Connor pouted. “Did you know he’s been giving Mitch gifts for millennia?”

“Mitch’s only been his form for maybe a decade,” Auston grumbled.

In response, Connor flipped Auston off. “Dionysus, then. Thanatos has been giving Dionysus gifts for millennia. Freddie, did you know about this?”

Freddie raised his eyebrows at Auston. It was a deeply judgemental look that foreshadowed a metric fuckton of earnest conversations about Auston’s love life in the near future. Auston hated that expression.

“On his own time,” Freddie repeated. “There is a balance and a method to these things.”

“But-” Connor protested, squirming.

“His own time,” Freddie said firmly and drew Connor away from Auston.

Somehow, Auston didn’t think that would be the end of it, not by a long shot.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Connor woke up to the sound of smashing glass.

“That sounded expensive,” he mumbled, rolling over and spreading out on the bed, taking advantage of the fact that Freddie wasn’t hogging the pillows. “Careful.”

Freddie was grumbling to himself, his voice rising in volume and pitch every few words before dropping back to an angry mumble. Something else smashed, and Connor forced himself to sit up.

“What’s going on, darling?” he asked, disentangling himself from the blankets.

“Pluto’s not a planet,” Freddie snarled. His hair was shifting through colors, flickering from red to purple to metallic silver and back. He was glaring at a painting on the wall, as if he was going to haul it off the wall and break that too. “Pluto’s not a planet,” he repeated, and went for the painting.

Connor was confused, and also a little angry that Freddie was destroying his decorations.

“Leave it,” he said, hinting at an order. “And what do you mean Pluto’s not a planet, of course it is. Ninth from the sun, farthest out in Earth’s solar system?”

Freddie hadn’t destroyed the painting, but was glaring at it as if it had personally offended him. Which, considering his mood, was not impossible. “NASA announced today that Pluto was no longer a planet.”

“Oh, baby.” Connor crawled off of the bed to wrap his arms around Freddie’s waist. “NASA is run by a bunch of mortals who still think toaster waffles are the best thing to happen to them since Prometheus gave them fire. Pluto’s still a planet. Someone making an official statement on the internet isn’t going to change that.”

“But they gave a list of reasons why it wasn’t a planet,” Freddie growled, expression falling into a pout. “So it wasn’t even a planet in the first place.”

“What do they know? It’s not like they’re  _ actually experts _ .They’re barely touching the surface of what outer space really is. Humans think they’re superior, and it’s precious.” 

Freddie harrumphed and continued to glare at Connor’s painting. “Ares is never going to let me live this down, the prick.” 

Connor kissed along the line of his lover’s shoulders, simply tightening his arms around Freddie’s waist and waiting him out. 

“I am the  _ king  _ of hell,” Freddie hissed. If he were a cat, his fur would be standing up. “I am the  _ chiefmost  _ of the underworld,  _ ruler  _ of the dead,  _ god  _ of riches and underground minerals. They think they can take away  _ my  _ planet and expect no retribution?”

Connor sighed. This could take awhile. He probably wasn’t going to get back to sleep for an hour at least.

“I should take a legion of the undead and tell them  _ they  _ no longer count as a planet.” Connor could practically feel his husband plotting how many soldiers to take and how to best take down the US government for supporting such a blasphemous organization. “I will lead an army of the earth’s greatest heroes and warriors into the surface world and demand my planet back!”

“Freddie,” Connor said, kissing behind his husband’s ear. “You’re not unleashing the zombie apocalypse over Pluto. For one, Auston would get sad you did it without him, and Mitch would cry for months.”

“ _ Mitch _ still has a moon,” Freddie sulked. “They haven’t revoked  _ his  _ space rock.”

“And neither Auston nor I have space rocks,” Connor soothed, hooking his chin over Freddie’s shoulder. “It’s okay, babe.”

Freddie huffed. “I want my planet back.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to take an army of the undead to retrieve my planet.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m going to invade Mars and lay claim to it.”

“You are not taking over the God of War’s planet.”

“Yes I am.”

“No, you’re not.” Connor bit at Freddie’s shoulder, not hard enough to leave a mark. “Come on, we’ll go to the kitchen and make hot chocolate and you can write an angry letter to NASA and we’ll see if we can’t get Auston to assassinate some high-ranking officials or something.” Connor gently pushed at Freddie’s shoulder, guiding him towards the door. “We can make a day of it. You can get your revenge and we avoid war among the Olympians. Everyone wins.”

Freddie was still pouting, but he went easily enough. “Do we have strawberry marshmallows?”

“I’m sure we can find some for you,” Connor said, rolling his eyes fondly. “Come on.”

The kitchen did indeed have strawberry marshmallows. It took half an hour and three mugs of cocoa apiece but Connor talked Freddie down, the kitchen staff worriedly offering Freddie’s favorite sweets in an effort to soothe him.

Connor thanked the staff--they always liked him a bit better than Freddie, probably due to the fact that he was technically the Mistress of the House and was less prone to eating nothing but pizza for two weeks straight--and ushered Freddie back to their rooms.

They settled back in bed, Connor now awake and keyed up from the sugar and Freddie worn out and exhausted from his hissy fit. Connor sat up with a book and Freddie’s head in his lap, reading and gently scratching circles into his husband’s scalp.

“Do you ever think we should have more friends?” Connor said absently when Freddie was nearly purring from the contact.

“Auston and Mitch not enough for you?” Freddie mumbled. “Is that why you’re so obsessed with getting them together?”

“It’d be nice for them to be able to be in the same room without meltdowns,” Connor admitted. “I meant more--you’re surrounded by shades. In the Overworld, I have my nymphs. The rest of the time it’s just us.”

“Those up high aren’t exactly fond of us,  _ kaereste _ .” Freddie tipped his head back, shamelessly nudging his way into more head scritches. “And the mortals die so quickly.”

“It’d be nice, though,” Connor sighed, and watched Freddie drift back off to sleep.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Auston spent a lot of time in hospitals, these days. It used to be people died at home most often, and he’d spend his days tiptoeing through bereaved family members to escort the confused soul down to the Underworld. People rarely died in groups unless it was a battlefield, and everything was so much simpler.

Now he spent days in scrubs, ducking into hospital rooms and gently herding souls towards the door. At least now they mostly understood that they were dead, if they were in the hospital. It was easier than car crashes or on-site accidents, at least.

Today was a young girl--cancer--and an older gentleman--a combination of a broken hip and old age--and he collected them quietly. The little girl chattered at him, probably relieved to feel less pain and too young to understand that he was Death and not another nurse, and the old man just surveyed him quietly.

“Don’t know if you’re a god or an angel, but I s’pose it’s time,” he said, and followed Auston down the hallway. They were easy ones, today, weren’t fighting death. That was altogether too rare these days, and Auston could feel that they were good souls. He made a mental note to mark their files as positive--not that it would change much, but he thought they might have a decent shot at the Asphodel Meadows.

Humans bustled around him, weaving through the hallways as he led his charges out of their ward. They could see him--he wasn’t so worried about being stopped as to need to hide himself--but they couldn’t see his charges. All they’d see was another nurse, in another set of scrubs, and all humans had all too logical explanations for anything out of the ordinary.

It wasn’t uncommon to feel the presence of other gods in hospitals-- Asclepius and his daughters kept themselves to hospitals and clinics, mostly, and they’d give him a nod as he passed. Apollo checked in sometimes in his newest body, tall and blond with a hint of a Swedish accent. Hermes liked bringing messages through, shifting through forms and disguises faster than Auston could track. The gods liked visiting their devotees, no matter which form they were worshipped in, and Hera in particular liked visiting those without family to care for them. They were gods, after all, and could be in a thousand hospitals at the same time. It was almost stranger to be the only god present in a hospital than it was to find another shade of another god.

This was the first time Auston recognized Dionysus in a hospital.

He supposed it wasn’t quite strange--he was one of the gods of fertility, and all. There were doctors who specialized in fertility and Dionysus probably played a hand in that, sometimes. And, of course, there was celebration and joy when a child was born. But this wasn’t a doctor’s office he was feeling the power from, it was the birthing wing, the nursery. Come to think of it, millennia and Auston had never encountered Dionysus in a hospital before? He wasn’t sure why.

Auston couldn’t help it. He turned towards the source of power and went to seek out Mitch.

The old man paled when they stopped by the windows looking into the nursery. “You’re not taking one of the babies, are you?”

“No,” Auston said absently, holding the little girl's hand. “Just visiting a friend of mine.”

“In that case, would you mind us stopping by?” the man asked, quietly. “My great-grandson was born a month or two ago and I was going to meet him when I...left.”

Auston didn’t usually allow last requests, but he did want to stop by and say hello to Mitch anyways. “I think we should ask the little miss here. Want to see some babies?”

She nodded, and so they slipped through the door, the little girl clinging tightly to Auston, or as tightly as a soul could. The old man followed them, padding along quietly.

“Auston,” Mitch said in surprise. He was cradling a baby expertly, dressed in scrubs the same way Auston was. “Are you here to collect one of the babies?”

“No, I just felt your presence and wanted to say hi. I already collected my two for the day here.”

Mitch glanced at the girl Auston was escorting and the old man peering into bassinets, cooing at the babies. “Oh.” He shifted the baby a little. “I was visiting some of mine.”

“Your handiwork?”

Mitch smiled. “This little guy’s parents were at a party nine months ago. I, uh. Nudged them along a bit, and now he’s here.”

“Yeah?”

Mitch gently laid the baby down, back into his bassinet.

“That one there, baby of a single mom--I helped her with the labor, had nothing to do with the conception, but she’ll be loved. This little gentleman,” he said, pausing at another bassinet. “Parents are older, the kids they’ve already got are mostly grown, and he was a bit of a surprise.”

“You know all their stories?”

Mitch looked at Auston, surprised. “I’m responsible for them, aren’t I?”

“Connor made me think you were mostly into parties and the like.”

“Oh, I am,” Mitch said, with a smirk. “I  _ also  _ like working here.” He glanced at the little girl, who was still clinging to Auston’s hand. “This little lady--three older brothers, and a younger sister. I helped all five of them along. Mind if I say hi?”

“I’m not stopping you.”

Mitch knelt, smiling at the little girl. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m Mitch, what’s your name?”

“Kelly,” she said, and sucked on her thumb.

“That’s really pretty, Kelly.” He reached into his pocket and produced a silver coin. He flicked his wrist and the coin arced into the air, and he caught it with ease. “Do you like magic, sweetheart?”

She nodded.

“Well, watch this.” Mitch performed a few small tricks, doubling it, making it vanish and reappear. He made it look like it had passed through her hand, pulled it out from behind his ears, and finally dropped it into her palm. She giggled and clapped her way through his tricks, and held onto the coin like it really was magic, not just silver.

“You know what, hold onto that for me,” he said, glancing up at Auston briefly. “It might come in handy. As a matter of fact--” he snapped his fingers behind her ear and spun another coin into existence. “You’ve got another one here! Look at that! Why don’t you give it to that nice gentleman over there, with the baby? One for you and one for him.”

Kelly nodded, accepting the coin. She skipped across the nursery to the man. She tugged at his sleeve and gave him the coin, and watched wide-eyed as he talked about something with big, grand hand gestures.

“You paid her fare across,” Auston said, watching Mitch’s face. “And his?”

Mitch shrugged. “I’ve a soft spot for the little ones, and he lived a good life, lots of children. His wife was a riot, even in labor. They made the best of the forties, no matter how rough it was.” He stood and looked up at Auston through his eyelashes. “You’re not mad?”

Auston shook his head, smiling a little. “I’m friends with Connor, remember? He’s trying to convince Charon to let children across without paying fare. He’s not pleased about the adults having to pay, either, but at least adults are usually buried with some sort of jewelry they can use to pay fare--rings, or necklaces, or something. The children usually get stuck. I can’t do much about it, but.”

“You’re trying,” Mitch said softly, watching as Kelly clapped, watching the babies. “That’s good.”

“You’re not the only one with a soft spot for the little ones.”

“So,” Mitch said after a long silence, and smiled at Auston, a little sadly. “I guess you’ll be taking them with you?”

“Part of the job,” Auston replied, and caught Kelly’s attention, holding out his hand. She took it, looking between Mitch and Auston with wide, trusting eyes. “Time for us to go. See you around, Mitch?”

“Not just around.” Mitch raised an eyebrow, lips quirked up in a genuine smile. “You still owe me a date, death-boy.”

“I guess I do. See you soon, then?”

“Soon,” Mitch promised. He waved to Auston’s charges, stepping back as Auston opened his portal and ushered them through. The portal closed with a soft pop, not loud enough to disturb the babies, but definitely noticeable.

Sweet with children and a good listener--Mitch was liking Auston more and more with each passing second.

◉◎◈◎◉●

“Go on a real date,” Connor had said. “Not just a hookup at a party. Not just one of your forms giving Mitch a gift and bailing. Go on a real date. Oh! There’s this adorable vegan cafe in Toronto you’ll absolutely love. Freddie and I take Cerberus all the time.”

Auston had paused to gape at Connor. “You take--Cerberus. The three headed hellbeast. To a vegan cafe in Toronto?”

Connor had beamed and bounced off, and now Auston had a dinner reservation and a suit and was fidgeting nervously. Auston still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but Connor was excited as--well, excited as hell.

Connor took Auston’s elbow and passed him through the portal, because apparently he didn’t trust Auston not to cut and run. Freddie followed, because his puppy eyes for Connor were still tragic.

Mitch was waiting for them outside the restaurant. It wasn’t Connor’s little vegan cafe, but a lakeside restaurant in rural Michigan.

Auston took one look at Mitch and everything within a hundred-meter radius died on the spot. The grass shriveled up, five mortals died of heart attacks, and birds dropped like rocks from the sky. The whole nine yards. 

Connor was smug enough to forgive Auston for the flower shop he’d just massacred.

“I told you so,” he said.

Freddie was hiding a smile as he guided Connor away and nudged Auston towards Mitch.

“Don’t have too much fun,” he said. “Or do anything stupid.”

Auston wasn’t sure he could keep that promise.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Mitch was a mess like this. He was spread out on Auston’s black silk sheets, all shaking and flushing and writhing like he couldn’t  _ possibly  _ take any more of what Auston was giving him. His glasses were crooked on his nose and just a little foggy from the heat rising off of his skin. 

He was always so fucking  _ hot _ . 

Auston didn’t mind hot. He was the living (ironically) personification of Death. Any room he was in was always a little chilly. Mitch changed that. 

“Feel better, love?” Mitch asked breathlessly, mewling when Auston pulled out. He bit the inside of his cheek, breathing heavily through his nose while Auston searched for something to clean them both up with. “Something’s been bothering you today. You wanna talk, or do you want to ignore it until Thanatos is rampaging in the Asphodel Meadows?”

Auston sighed and turned Mitch over onto his belly. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I think someone is trying to fuck with me.” He tugged some Kleenex out of their bedside table drawer to clean himself, and then Mitch. “I dunno. My body can’t decide if I’m pissed off, or if I’m just really, really tired.” He binned the dirty tissue and flopped down next to his lover. “C’mere for a cuddle?”

Mitch didn’t answer. He pushed his way into Auston’s arms and nuzzled into the soft spot of his throat. “I don’t like that you feel that way,” he murmured. “And I’m mad that I can’t do anything about it.”

“Listen, baby, I’m gonna be fine. I’m not going anywhere without you, okay?” Auston hid a kiss in the mess of Mitch’s curls. “Everything’s gonna be just fine. I’m sure it’s nothing, and that I’m just a paranoid old fuck.” 

Mitch made a very unconvinced noise. He knew Auston wasn’t lying, but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

“You’ll tell me if it gets worse?”

“Promise.” Auston closed his eyes, breathing in the salty tang of sweat and the earthy scent Mitch always carried with him. “Even with Freddie anchoring as much as he can, he’s been needing me more recently. It’s better now that Connor’s back, but...we all know Hades is strongest when Persephone is home, and I’m worried about what’ll happen when Connor returns to the Overworld.”

Mitch worried at his bottom lip. “Managing the underworld isn't usually this hard for you, is it?”

“No, but I also haven't been a newlywed before,” Auston said. “It's all part of growing pains.”

“Connor’s been asking me about how hard it would be for him and Freddie to have a baby.” Auston could feel Mitch's eyelashes batting against his skin. “Is--could that be part of it?”

“It would explain a lot of Freddie's distraction.” Auston sighed.”We’ll figure it out. I'm sure it's just the world changing again. Go to sleep, Mitch. If I know nothing else, the problem will still be there in the morning.”

By Auston’s estimation, they got about four hours of sleep before every liquid in the room was screaming with an incoming scry from Connor. Mitch was grumbling, looking for a scrying bowl.

“We left you alone for  _ five minutes _ !” Connor shouted when Mitch finally got the bowl next to the bed to work, and yup, those were definitely briars starting to sprout everywhere. “Five minutes, and you got  _ engaged _ !”

“It was less of an engagement and more of an agreement that it’ll happen eventually,” Auston tried.

Connor scowled, the briars producing thorns aggressively. “I’d better be your best man.  _ Both  _ of your best men.”

“Best men exist to marry the bride if the groom is killed,” Auston said airily, peering into the scrying bowl with somewhat of a passively amused expression on his face. “Somehow I don’t think a best man will be necessary.”

“That’s not what it means anymore,” Connor snapped, bristling.

Mitch crawled over Auston’s back to straddle him, tucking his chin into his lover’s neck.   
“You can be our best man, Conn.”

“You’re fucking right I’m your best man, you assholes.” Connor’s face became significantly less stormy and the briars slowed in their abnormal growth.

Auston hummed, relaxing when Mitch began to rub circles between his shoulder blades. “You can say ‘I told you so’ if it makes you feel better.”

“I’m gonna tattoo it to your fucking ass when you’re sleeping,” growled Connor. “ _ Three thousand years _ I’ve been trying to get you two to go on a date.” 

“You seem a little tense, baby,” Mitch said over Auston’s shoulder. “Is there trouble in paradise?” 

The briars flared behind Connor. “I’m gonna kill Freddie before the decade is out.”

Auston rested his chin on the fold of his forearms and dozed lightly while Mitch talked Connor out of leaving early. Connor sounded pretty pissed off, something about Freddie not respecting his personal space and being too clingy. It was funny, because usually Connor didn’t have any sort of problem with Freddie being clingy. It was something else, and Auston knew Mitch would have to spend hours digging it out of him. Auston also knew that in the end, Connor wouldn’t leave early. He wouldn’t be able to do that to Freddie, no matter what happened.

“M’gonna sleep for a little bit,” Auston said, turning over to kiss Mitch. “Wake me up if you need me, okay?”

Mitch hummed in resignation, letting Auston out from under him so he could slip under the covers. He reached out to stroke through Auston’s hair. “You want me to go somewhere else and deal with Connor?”

“No, babe, I sleep better when you’re with me.” 

“Alright, you sap.” Mitch palmed the bottom of the scrying dish before moving to sit with his back against the headboard. He smiled when Auston curled around him and used his lap as a pillow, taking a moment to pet his lover to sleep before looking up at Connor and pretending that he’d heard everything his friend had just said.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Mitch was good at calming Auston down. He took pride in it, in fact.

At first it was hard to find the angle. Mitch tried speaking to him in different languages, because while Auston might be Grecian-dominant at the moment, all cultures worshipped Death. He tried Egyptian, Russian, Gaelic, and a whole list of lost languages. It turned out that it really didn’t make a difference what language he spoke. After an agonizing period of buddy-buddy time with bootlegged Rosetta Stone software, Mitch decided to stick to English and French because they were easier and he didn’t have to struggle with the proto-Germamic diphthongs quite so much.

Sex worked sometimes. It was rough and bestial and  _ amazing _ , but sometimes Auston was too pissed off for it. Mitch understood.

It wasn’t until a group of demigods caused a sudden influx of unscheduled deaths that Mitch figured it out.

He hadn’t been there for the initial reaction, and was glad for it. There was a reason people from all walks of Life feared Death. However, Mitch sort of had a sense for when Auston was upset. He’d been sleeping  _ really fucking good _ in their bed when the entire house shook. Mitch knew immediately that something was wrong with Auston. He put his slippers on and pulled one of Auston’s shirts over his head before opening a portal into the Hall of Judgement and stepping through.

The first thing that he did was trudge past the chaos to get a cup of coffee from Auston’s office. Mitch didn’t know what time it was, but it was certainly too fucking early to deal with this without coffee. He used Connor’s ‘Fuck This Shit O’Clock’ mug, filled it to the brim, and cast a quick spell to ensure it would keep refilling so long as the coffee pot was running. A second spell kept the cup stabilized so it wouldn’t spill if jostled, and a third caused it to float along behind him. Satisfied, he walked back out to survey the damage, the coffee mug drifting cheerfully in his wake

To his credit, Auston wasn’t the only one pissed off. Freddie didn’t look too happy about the situation, and Connor was passive-aggressively herding souls into a straight line. Mitch felt like he should be doing something to help, even if he had no idea what the fuck was going on.

Auston was full-on in Thanatos mode at the moment, and he was threatening someone’s genitalia with shoe polish and a blow torch through a portal. In Greek. At the top of his lungs.

As with many things Auston did, Mitch was endeared. 

Connor noticed Mitch’s arrival, and went to stand next to him. “They’re children,” he said with a sigh. “I married a four-year-old. You probably have rights to claim Auston as five or six, but Freddie is definitely four.”

Mitch scoffed. “Auston is at least eight on a good day.”

“And today?”

“Three. Four is being too generous.” Mitch sighed. He gave Connor a serious look. “What happened? What am I walking into?”

Connor rolled his eyes. “Demigods,  _ again _ . Some idiots--one of Poseidon's, of course, he  _ never  _ bothers making sure they understand their gifts, and one of Zeus’, because he’s got so goddamn many, and--sorry. Um, some demigods discovered their powers and unleashed a few lesser beasts onto the Philippines. Zeus and Poseidon are on damage control for their fucking progeny, but meanwhile we’ve got several hundred deaths we weren’t expecting, and at least one gate-guardian regenerating in Tartarus, which. That was a bad portal-call, let me tell you.”

“Demigods aren’t usually this bad, are they?” Mitch bit his lip. “You mentioned demigods at the border awhile ago, but I didn’t think it was a problem.”

“ _ Your _ demigods usually end up having scores of children and starting business empires,” Connor said dryly. “Auston’s die young, or end up wreaking death everywhere. One of his, Olga something, I think? Russia, at least--was responsible for the deaths of about five thousand in the span of about a year. Mine become good gardeners, and Freddie’s--” Connor closed his mouth, teeth clacking together harshly. “Point is, our demigods are relatively harmless. Zeus’ cause trouble, as do Poseidon’s, and don’t get me started on Aphrodite and Hephaestus. Demigods were bad a couple thousand years ago--one of Apollo’s started his own religion, which was more than I ever wanted to deal with--and they fluctuate. They usually avoid Erebus. Bad luck to tempt the gods of hell. Which means we generally get left alone, but.”

“They ended up killing a lot of people, which affects the Underworld,” Mitch said, processing. “Right. Any tips for calming Thanatos down?”

Connor gave him a blank look. “Get out of the way, and stay there until he calms himself down.” Freddie shouted something that caused Connor’s attention to rocket to him. “Fuck. I’ll be back. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Mitch took a breath, and did something stupid; he walked over to where Auston was still ranting and raving to whoever was across the portal. He waited until Auston had come to somewhat of a stop before latching onto his arm. “Hi, honey,” he bubbled, smiling. 

Thanatos turned, the bones underneath his skin shifting and contorting in a accordance with his fury. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like the sharp snap of bones and the last gurgling breaths of someone drowning. Mitch didn’t quite understand what exactly he was saying, but he got the jist.

Anyone else would’ve been scared. Anyone else wasn’t engaged to him.

“You should’ve woken me up,” he scolded, and smiled at Thanatos, distracting him entirely. “I could’ve helped. You always leave me behind when you wake up in the morning. I’ll have you know that I’m very well-versed in politics and negotiations.”

Mitch chattered at Auston, gently tugging him away from the portal towards a bench along the wall. He didn’t really pay attention to what he was saying, instead focusing on Thanatos’ cool skin under this hands and the way his beloved held himself stiffly, unsure of how to react to Mitch interrupting his threats.

Slowly, Thanatos relaxed and his skin began to regain color; the frankly terrifying guise of Thanatos melted away into Auston’s exhausted features.

“Welcome back,” breathed Mitch, kissing Auston’s forehead, cheeks, and lips.

“Sorry,” Auston mumbled, resting his forehead on Mitch’s shoulder. The hall was eerily quiet around them, but Mitch ignored that in favor of gently petting at Auston’s messy hair.

“What for?” Mitch said airily, and kissed the top of Auston’s head. “You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re fine.”

Auston smiled, eyes softening further. “You always make me feel better when I’m upset.”

Mitch just grunted, scratching lightly at the hair at the base of Auston’s neck. “Sort of my job, innit?”

“You do good. It helps that you’re pretty. Thanatos still can’t get over how pretty you are.” Auston let Mitch push the floating cup of coffee into his hands, a quizzical look on his face. “What’s this for?”

Mitch kissed Auston’s cheek, smoothing a soothing hand over his stomach. “It’s for putting up with whatever shit you have to put up with today. I love you. I’ll be at home playing the new Kingdom Hearts game. Call me if you need me?”

Auston hummed sadly, slinking an arm around Mitch’s waist to pull him in for a proper kiss. “I’ll try to be quick about it.”

“Would it be a futile effort to tell you not to kill anyone?”

“It would.”

“Hm. Have fun, then. Don’t get too creative. People will notice.” Mitch peeled himself from Auston with a large measure of reluctance. He felt eyes on his ass when he walked away. 

“What the fuck did you say to him?” Connor asked, hurrying to walk with Mitch. “The last person who got between him and his mood got blasted to the moon, practically.”

Mitch shrugged. “I’m going back to bed,” he said in place of an answer. “If he gets going again, let me know?”

“Seriously, teach me your tricks,” Connor said, but left Mitch to wander back towards Freddie and the stunned souls waiting for judgement.

Mitch yawned, stretched, and made his way back to bed, where he flopped down with a relieved sigh and fell back asleep.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Technically, Connor wasn’t supposed to go back to the surface for the six months he was in the Underworld--was fairly certain there was something in the deal Hades had struck with Zeus and Demeter over Persephone’s living situation about that--but in practice, he’d pop up and check on Spring’s progress and his nymphs every few days. In years past, he’d visited Mitch up on the surface, but ever since Mitch and Auston had hit it off, those visits were less frequent.

Today was one of the days he checked in and made sure the seasons were functioning properly without his supervision. He decided to visit Brazil, check in on the rainforests, and drop by Madagascar on the way back, if he could get the portals to work quickly enough. Connor stepped into Persephone, and felt godhood roll over their skin.

Of course, as soon as they stepped out of the hell-gate (safer and faster than their portals, sadly), their nymphs flocked to them and spring burst into full bloom around the gate. The nymphs greeted Persephone in the voices of spring--bright sunlight and soft breezes, the rustle of leaves and the whistle of grass, bubbling water and the soothing patter of rain.

It was a good day--they loved the rainforests for their rich variety of life year round, and it was nice to give spring a bit of a push along the edges of the deserts bordering Peru and Ecuador. The nymphs told them everything, about how they were building the plant life up stronger against the humans’ pollution and invasions, about how there were humans making hybrid plants, making more food and reinforcing Persephone’s older designs.

Persephone settled in the middle of a field a short distance from the hell-gate and began weaving flower crowns for their favorite nymphs, listening as they chattered at them. Persephone’s sweetness bubbled to the surface, flirting harmlessly with their nymphs, as it always was.

The nymphs were Persephone’s friends, and they reflected the diversity of nature. There were women with flower crowns and men whose voices bubbled like springs, those who shifted between forms with the same ease that they drifted through life, and those who had never really chosen a form at all. They all had a touch of viciousness to them, but that was the way of nymphs.

“I should probably go,” Persephone told them finally, as the sun started to set. The nymphs sighed sadly--they were never quite happy when Persephone was away. It was alternately flattering and overwhelming, depending on how long they’d been gone. “You’re doing wonderfully. Demeter is keeping an eye out for you, yeah?”

The tallest of the nymphs whispered agreement in the sound of summer breezes and windchimes; the others echoed their response.

“Well then. Be good for me,” Persephone said, and rose. The nymphs followed them to the hell-gate, whispering to each other mournfully as they brushed the leftover flower petals from their clothes, slipping into Connor as easily as changing clothes. “I’ll be back in a few months.”

The hell-gate was nauseating, as usual, but it brought him right to the front door of his home in the Underworld. He went to find his husband, wondering where he might be after a short search revealed he wasn't in any of his usual places.

“Looking for Hades? They went to your rooms a while ago,” one of Freddie’s many, many helpful spirits pointed out after Connor’s second lap of the ground floor. Connor nodded regally and swept down the hallway, silently ordering the palace to  _ listen  _ to him for once.

Connor found Freddie right where the spirit had said he’d be: in their rooms, passed out on the bed, still fully clothed and on top of all the covers. He sighed and leaned down to push kisses into his husband’s hair. “Sweetheart,” he murmured, tugging Freddie’s jacket off of him. “Come on, sit up for me. Have you eaten anything?”

“I am the supreme ruler of hell,” Freddie mumbled, complying with Connor’s pokes and prods. “I don’t need to eat.”

Connor let Freddie rest against his stomach. “So you  _ haven’t _ eaten anything. Arms up, love.”

Freddie raised his arms and let Connor strip his shirt off as well. “Pizza sound good to you?”

“We always get pizza. Let’s get takeout or something.” Connor lifted Freddie’s chin, stroking the curve of his husband’s jaw. There was angry exhaustion lingering in the shadows underneath Freddie’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

Freddie kissed Connor’s palm. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired.” He smiled up at Connor, the very picture of innocence. “Worse things have happened, Connor.”

“Doesn’t mean I like it when they do,” Connor grumbled. He helped Freddie toe off his shoes and undo his jeans. “Here, you go back to sleep, and I’ll wake you up when food’s here.”

“You’re a god of hell,” Freddie mumbled, but didn’t complain as Connor wrestled the sheets out from underneath him and gestured for Freddie to tuck himself in. “Just summon it.”

“Summoned food doesn’t taste as good as real take out,” Connor said, and gave Freddie a kiss. “Sleep, you. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.” Freddie hummed agreement and slipped back into sleep.

Connor’s idea of takeout ended up being eggplant curry for Freddie and some sort of spicy noodles with tofu for himself. Freddie sleepily managed a spoon while Connor laughed at him, smugly handling his chopsticks.

“You’re a calamity,” Connor teased, stealing a bite of Freddie’s food after his husband spilled some onto the coverlet. “You need to stop working so hard if you’re this tired, baby. You and Auston both.”

“Auston just got engaged, and he’s already about five years behind on his paperwork,” Freddie said. He picked bits of onion out of his curry and put them on Connor’s noodles, smiling innocently when Connor raised an eyebrow at him. “And I don’t think Mitch’s just going to let him out of bed with a smile every day, either.”

“Mitch needs to work too,” Connor pointed out, taking a bite of noodles and moaning a little. Take out was definitely his favorite part of the 21st century. “Otherwise the world’s population gets fucked.” He sighed, putting his takeout box on the bed. “Seriously, though. I haven’t seen you this tired since the humans decided nuclear weaponry was the way of the future and you had to readjust your trial system. There hasn’t been an intake surge that I can tell--what’s going on, Freddie?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Freddie said, rolling his eyes. It would be more effective if he hadn’t immediately followed it up with a long, deep yawn. “Demigods are messing with my barrier spells, and I keep having to renew them. It’s probably just some bullshit quest they’re determined to pass. Steal your pearls, or something, thanks to those fucking Riordan books.”

“They were good books,” Connor said mildly. He reached out to cup Freddie’s cheek, thumbing over his cheekbone when his husband produced another yawn. “Hey. I can hold the barrier spells for a few days. You get some rest, focus on your trials. Let me  _ help  _ you, Fred.”

“That’d be a relief, actually.” Freddie smiled wryly, and took another bite of curry. “You shouldn’t go away for so long, Connor. I forget who I’ve married.”

“If I can carry out curses against the souls of the dead, I can take care of a few demigods.” Connor smiled, dropped his hand. “They don’t call me  _ aristi cthonia  _ for nothing.”

“They also call you  _ Despoina _ ,” Freddie teased lightly. “And  _ Hagne _ .”

“Shut up.” Connor was looking down, hiding a smile. “My point still stands. Transfer the spells over.”

Freddie reached over to set their food on the nightstand and settled back, watching Connor with a critical eye. “You sure?”

Connor leaned up and kissed Freddie, short and certain. “Positive. Do it.”

Hades rippled into being in place of Freddie; Connor allowed Persephone to surface as the dominant personality. Carefully, Hades took Persephone’s hands and kissed each of them, and slowly transferred individual barrier spells one by one. Content with the passage, Hades kissed Persephone long and deep, conveying the relief and gratitude that Freddie wouldn’t. They drew back and searched Persephone’s face; satisfied, the god melted back into Freddie; Persephone followed suit to return as Connor.

“That’s a relief,” Freddie said, reaching for his food. He frowned at the expression on Connor’s face. “You alright, love?”

“They’re not as heavy as I thought,” Connor said slowly. “These are barrier spells for  _ all  _ of the Underworld?”

Freddie grimaced. “They’re weaker than I’d like at the moment.” He sighed. “They’ll hold for a week at least, but I’ve got to work on strengthening them.”

Connor closed his eyes, playing with the threads of power. “I could weave them the way I settle roots,” he said. “Make them grounded further, grow a little stronger.”

“If you’re sure it won’t bring them down.”

“It won’t.” Connor hummed and settled into the rhythm of tidying up the power, putting lifeblood into the walls, making them feed off of themselves. “It’s like growing briars,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “I can make these stronger.”

He raced along the spells, growing them stronger, more plant-like, with deep roots and sharp thorns. He tweaked the joins, making them give and repair before they snapped, planting them deep and raising them high.

“Connor,” someone said gently, calling Connor back into himself. “Come on. That’s a good boy, there we go.”

Connor opened his eyes. “Hrm?” he managed.

“You’ve been doing that for at least three hours,” Freddie said softly. “Come on, come to bed before you wear yourself out, and then both of us would be tired and where would that leave us?”

“I fixed the spells,” Connor said drowsily, allowing himself to be tucked in. He hadn’t noticed the passing of time, but now that he was out of the anchor spells, he could feel exhaustion pulling him under. The barrier spells were big workings that dragged huge amounts of power out of anyone holding them, much less working on them. Connor wasn’t sure how Freddie managed to hold them for centuries at a time. “I think I fixed them.”

“I’m sure they’re lovely,” Freddie said comfortingly, spooning up against Connor’s back. “Sleep now.”

“Sleep now,” Connor echoed, and closed his eyes again.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Auston always worked better at his stupid fucking computer when Mitch was sleeping in his lap. It might have been the smell of his hair, or the feel of his heartbeat against Auston’s chest. All Auston knew was that he didn’t get pissed off at anyone for the sake of Mitch’s beauty sleep. 

Today had been a slow day, all in all. Auston only had another hour and a half or so to sit in front of his PC before he had to go and collect souls. He was feeling...backlogged. Tired. Listless, even. He was having trouble focusing on the words on the screen.

“You’re mumbling,” Mitch told him, voice all low and sleep-rough.

“I’m not mumbling,” Auston mumbled.

Mitch rubbed his cheek against Auston’s shoulder. “I’m gonna take over for a little bit, love. You seem distracted.” He batted Auston’s hands away from the keyboard before moving to sit up straight in his lap, facing the computer. “I still think Freddie makes you do too much.”

Auston let his forehead rest against Mitch’s back. “It’s my job, baby. All of it. I just have little slip-ups every now and then. It’s hard to balance my shit.” He looked up to press a fond kiss at the base of Mitch’s skull. “I’ve also got a lovely new lover to please. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find my routine again.”

“Are you sure?” Mitch asked, worry evident in his voice. “I don’t distract you or anything? Because I can go bother Connor.”

“I want you to bother me all the time,” Auston reassured. 

Mitch giggled, clicking away at the keyboard. “Yeah? You don’t mind when I snuggle you at work and bring you coffee when you’re trying to collectively bag a group of souls from a plane crash?”

“I embrace it. I’m fairly certain I fell in love with you even more when you brought me that pick-me-up, if such a thing were possible.” Auston hugged his arms around Mitch’s waist and closed his eyes. “You’re perfect.”

“Aw, now you’re just fishing for brownie points.”

Auston hummed dismissively, melting into a light doze. 

Mitch tucked his feet up and got to work sorting through the intake forms, wondering if it really  _ was  _ work that was making Auston so tired.

It was true that Auston certainly had more work than Mitch himself did--Auston kept records, and Mitch generally...didn’t. The humans were obsessed enough with life that they’d do that for him--death, though, wasn’t quite as easy to keep track of, and it wasn’t like there were more than two ways to get born, really.

For whatever reason, Auston had the system set to an archaic form of French, which gave Mitch a bit of a headache but was otherwise understandable, even if it took him a good ten minutes to decipher one particularly complex phrase.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and went after the stack of papers, trying to get through as many as possible before Auston woke up and decided that he was overworking himself.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Mitch woke up one morning in mid-February to Auston sleeping soundly beside him and Connor screaming bloody murder.

He bolted out of bed, expecting Auston to be right behind him. He tore down the hall to the suite of rooms Connor shared with Freddie, and found Connor shaking Freddie's motionless body with the kind of desperation Mitch had never seen his friend display.

“Connor,” Mitch yelped, grabbing his friend around the torso to drag him back. “Connor, what in  _ Hades _ \--”

“He won’t wake up!” Connor howled. Under his skin, Mitch could feel Connor’s godly form writhing in pain and agony.

There was a clatter in the doorway, but Mitch was too busy trying to keep Connor from clawing up the bedding to look.

“Connor--Connor-- _ Connor _ !” Mitch put a little steel in his spine, braced himself, and dragged Connor away from Freddie’s still form.

Connor finally slumped back into Mitch’s arms, shuddering violently.

“What,” Auston said, very flatly. “The ever-loving  _ fuck  _ is going on?”

It took fifteen minutes, one subtle calming draught slipped into a glass of ice water, and Auston shooing off a collection of inquisitive shades for the story to begin to emerge.

One of Persephone’s favored had died, which meant Connor had greeted them on the banks of the Styx. Connor had personally escorted her to the halls of judgement, giddily discussing hybrids and crop rotation. They’d gotten so involved that Freddie had politely excused himself after half an hour, pleading exhaustion.

Connor had assumed Freddie was just being polite and giving Connor time with one of the gardeners Connor had invested so much time and love into. After hours of talking, when Connor had finally let his favored go with a promise to find her again later, he’d found Freddie sound asleep in their bed.

That was strange--Freddie hated going to bed without at least a goodnight kiss that more often than not turned into a round of sex. Connor had brushed it off, washed his face, and crawled into bed beside his husband.

The next morning, though, Connor couldn’t rouse Freddie for love nor money and had flown into a panic. That was the screaming Mitch had heard.

Auston looked troubled when the whole story was out in the open. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking because they all knew: something was very wrong.

MItch suddenly remembered how drowsy Auston had been recently and swallowed nervously. Connor was still trembling in his arms.

“I’m going to explore the Dreamland,” Auston said. He leaned over and brushed a kiss first to Mitch’s lips and then one to Connor’s cheek. “You two hold down the fort here.”

“Be safe,” Mitch whispered, and watched Auston’s retreating back.

◉◎◈◎◉●

The Dreamworld that Auston walked into was an eerie one.

Auston, when he walked as Mors, knew the dreamscape. This was not one of his creations. He wandered, confused and lost, and saw no sign of Freddie anywhere. There was no Freddie, no Hades, none of his other forms. The King of Hell was simply gone.

Auston walked the fields, calling out for his friend and brother. No one replied, not even the shades that usually petitioned Auston for freedom. If Freddie was asleep, he was asleep somewhere Auston couldn’t reach him.

He walked, searching for Freddie. It took him longer than he wanted to admit to realize that this dreamscape was empty, not only of his friend but of any true souls; the beings that surrounded him were all reflections, imitations.

This was wrong, all wrong, Auston through. He went to leave, only to find himself stuck, as if he were wading through a swampy muck that sucked him in and held him down.

With a fierce pull, he wrenched himself free, failed, and yanked himself back to the land of the dead.

“Fuck,” he said, and went to find Connor.

Time had passed while he was under, not the minutes he’d thought had gone by. It was hours later--maybe as much as a day.

He found Connor and Mitch in one of the gardens, sitting together and quietly talking.

“Oh, fuck,” Mitch said, surging to his feet and throwing his arms around Auston. “I thought we’d lost you too.”

“Someone was definitely trying to keep me under,” Auston said. He let himself be bullied into sitting on the bench. Connor pressed something--a warm mug that Connor must have summoned--into his hands. “What’s this?”

“Hot cocoa mix,” Connor explained. “The same thing you had last night after dinner. Freddie had like four cups.”

Auston considered, still drowsy. He’d had one cup then and found it overly sweet, but given how tired and shaky he felt now something sugary and warm sounded perfect.

Connor continued. “My mother sent it, but the marshmallows have gelatin.” He made a moue of disgust. “Figured it was what you needed right now, better than the mulled wine Mitch and I were having.”

“We all know how sleepy it makes you,” Mitch murmured. He was still clinging to Auston’s side, a little awkwardly now that they were sitting on the bench. “What happened?”

“Someone wanted me to stay under,” Auston said. “They really, really wanted me to stay under.”

Connor sucked in a breath through his teeth. “So we still don’t know anything.”

“We know more than we did before,” Auston said flatly. “Whoever’s doing this—they’re trying to get me, too.”

Mitch looked between them. “So can’t Auston just not sleep?”

Auston laughed dryly. “I’m the god of dreams. I can’t just leave the dreamworld unattended for too long, but I think once I go back in I won’t be able to come out.”

“And if you’re stuck there that’s a problem too,” Connor said. “So that’s a problem too.”

“And not a small one.” Auston sighed. “We should warn the other deathsgods. Ker needs to know.”

“You think someone will come for her?”

Auston shrugged. “If you were working your way through a list of deathsgods you wanted disabled, would you start with the biggest threats or the littlest ones? If it worked on Hades, you want to bet it won’t work on me or Ker?”

Mitch shuddered. “So what do we do?”

“Nightmares and dreams can continue unchecked for some time. If they’re stranger than normal, it’s not ideal but no one will truly notice there’s a problem for a little while. Maybe the prophets and seers will notice, but we have a little time there. Death, though--if Death stops for a while that’s going to be very,  _ very  _ noticeable.”

Auston took another sip of his hot cocoa. It was overly-sweet, with a faintly bitter aftertaste.

“Fuck,” Connor said after a moment, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “Spring is coming. I have to--I’m going to have to go to the Overworld, or risk causing a war.”

“You can’t leave,” Auston said suddenly, wide-eyed. “With Hades...unavailable, all the powers of the Underworld are tied to you. If you leave--if you leave, all the barriers will collapse. The Underworld will just stop existing.”

Mitch looked confused. “Would that be so bad?” He jumped when Auston slammed his hands down onto the table.

“ _ Be so bad _ ? Freddie and I would stop existing too. All the souls that we rule over here, they’d be roaming the overworlds. There are more deceased souls we rule over here than in Zeus and Poseidon’s realms combined. The entire Overworld would be overrun with souls, and that’s just the  _ ambivalent  _ souls we let roam loose. Think about every evil person who’s ever lived, every Titan, every monster we keep contained down here, and imagine them let loose onto everyone you’ve ever known. It was only through Hades working together with his brothers that we were able to get them contained in the first place, and we’ve imprisoned hundreds more monsters since then. The world would  _ fall apart _ . Connor can’t leave.”

Connor patted Mitch’s hand. “It’s okay. People don’t always realize how much Persephone matters to the Underworld. And the Overworld doesn’t like to think about us down here. They don’t like knowing how much hell we could unleash if they pissed us off enough.” He smiled grimly. “And there’s an amount I keep hidden from my parents. They think I’m helpless, so they tell me things. They don’t necessarily know what power I wield down here.”

Mitch worried at his lip. “So why would they put Freddie to sleep?”

Auston shrugged. “That’s assuming it was them who did it. For all we know, this is just another part of Hades’ life cycle that we didn’t know about. It could be caused by a lot of things. Maybe he’s overworked. Maybe you and I getting engaged caused a shift in power. Maybe a mortal is fucking around with things they don’t understand. Or maybe this is a really successful escape attempt that we haven’t figured out yet.”

“It’s probably not a coup, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Connor added. “And I don’t think anyone upstairs is dumb enough to try to shut down the Underworld entirely. They know who we’ve got in here.”

Mitch didn’t look entirely reassured. “And what if they are dumb enough?”

Auston hissed in a breath through his teeth. “Then we’ve got a lot more problems than we already do.”

With that said, Auston started pulling strings. There was only so much he could do though--they had so few leads.

Chiron had not ferried across any mortals in and then out again, and a subtle interrogation of Hermes--who went by Tyson these days--revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

It didn’t help that Auston was so goddamn tired all of the time now. He was finding it hard to shift between Auston and Thanatos and Hypnos.

“I don’t think I can stay awake much longer,” he told Connor when they were going over the wards with a fine-toothed comb. They needed to wake Freddie, but they also needed to make sure nothing happened if--when--Thanatos fell to the sleep that had overtaken Hades. “I can feel it pulling me under.”

Connor hadn’t been eating, picking at his food and barely drinking anything but the jasmine tea laced with nectar that Mitch kept pressing into his hands, mug after mug.

Now, Connor was inspecting a loose strand of spellwork, face furrowed in grim concentration. “Do we have a plan in place, then?” 

“The judges will handle everything, and shelve everything that they can’t, or pass it along to you. If you go under…” Auston made a face. “I don’t know what we’ll do then.”

“I haven’t been tired at all,” Connor admitted. “I don’t think we’ll get there.”

Auston sighed. “Yeah. I’ve also let the Kers know. And Hermes.”

“You told  _ Hermes _ ?”

Auston levelled Connor with a look. “He ferries the dead to Chiron. I told him I’ll be busy. He didn’t ask questions.”

“You don’t think he’ll blab?

“He knows us,” Auston said. “Okay, fuck. You keep on with this, and I’ll start looking for files of the recent dead that could possibly be strong enough to affect me or Freddie. Or those living who would have reason to fuck with us.”

It wasn’t a welcome thought. As much as mortals feared it, and as much as the Olympians wanted to deny it, the Underworld was a crucial part of the universe. There was no life without death. An Underworld that failed to function as an Underworld would upset the cosmic order, unleashing the Titans and other monsters kept there.

Connor looked. Auston made preparations too--he gave the judges more power to decide, with Connor’s blessing. Together, they sorted those that he could on his own, sent back those who were trying for a second or third life. Auston dug through the files, looking for anyone who might have a personal grudge against Hades and the ability to do something about it.

The whole time, Auston was fighting sleep. Someone wanted Hypnos and Thanatos out of play, because Auston slipped under, and could not awaken.

This time, it was Mitch’s screaming that woke the Underworld.

◉◎◈◎◉●

When Mitch dreamed, he could tell the difference between the impulses firing in his brain and a message sent from Hypnos. As the god of dreams’ lover, he perhaps had just a bit more insight into what a dream might mean, even if he had as much control over his dreams as he did the tides.

It wasn’t unusual to stumble into a romantic fantasy. Auston was a softy at heart, who wanted a massive wedding that was a frothy celebration packed with people they knew, garlands of flowers, and--of course--free-flowing wine. Mitch was a little less picky; as the god of wine and fertility he’d been to wedding celebrations all over the world, and had been part of them all. He left the wedding dreaming to Auston, who had spent most of his life in the Underworld, and the only weddings he’d ever gotten to attend were ones where someone died during the ceremony.

All that to say, Mitch wasn’t surprised to find himself in the middle of a dance floor, waltzing with Auston when he dreamed. This particular dream he’d dreamed more than once; Auston wasn’t subtle about how much he wanted to get married.

This wedding was Auston’s dream wedding, with touches of Mitch everywhere. Pan and Thanatos had receded to the background; this was their avatar’s day.

“I’m so happy I have you,” Auston said, spinning Mitch a little awkwardly, his smile infectious. “I’m so happy you can always find me.”

Mitch kept dancing, but felt horror crawl over his skin. “I’m always yours,” he said.

Auston whirled him around. “You’ll never have to be alone. You will never, ever lose me,” he promised. “I will always come back for you.”

There was something about this dream that felt wrong, and Mitch struggled to figure out why there was panic bubbling in his stomach. “But what if you don’t? I’m so--I’m so scared, Auston. I love you so, so much, Auston, and that fucking terrifies me. I’ve never--I’ve never had that before.

Auston rested their foreheads together as the music swelled. “You think I’m not scared too?” he asked. Mitch sighed, huffing out a dryly amused breath. “It’s all scary, babe. We’re not good at this yet.”

There was still something that nagged at the back of MItch’s mind. “But what if you never come back?”

“I’ll always come back. Remember what we just promised?  _ You fed my darkness with light; I was incomplete and you made me whole _ .”

Mitch laughed shakily. “ _ I join my life with yours _ ,” he finished. “ _ To laugh with you in joy, to grieve with you in sorrow, to grow with you in love _ .”

Auston let his hands fall to Mitch’s waist to steady him as the song finished. “I know you’re scared, precious. I know that it’s new and frightening to be in love.” He eased a kiss out of Mitch to a smattering of applause. In the crowd, Mitch could hear Connor’s cat-call. “We’re in this together, yeah? I take care of you, you take care of me. We’ll get through because we love each other.”

“And I do love you,” Mitch murmured, giving himself over to smile up at Auston.

Auston’s eyes grew dark. “You’ll always be able to find me,” he said, and the dream dissolved.

Mitch sat bolt upright, jerked from his dream and filled with panic.

“Mitch?” Connor mumbled. They’d taken to sleeping in the same bed together like they had as children, when sleeping next to their still, unconscious partners felt like too much. They were gods of warmth, of revelry in the Overworld. What were they doing here, surrounded by the cold marble of the Underworld? How could they exist here, surrounded by death, and cold, and suffering?

Mitch had to get out of there. He had to go.

What was  _ wrong  _ with him? How had he convinced himself to stay?

So, Mitch bolted. He fled for the surface, where there were always worshippers—those in need of wine, the devotees of the wild places, people desperate for fertile crops or wombs.

Even if the name Dionysus was not what the people called out for, they still called for him. Some clever mortals even tried to piece together the rituals of his cult from a thousand years before.

Grateful to be off use, Mitch let himself shed the weight of responsibility.

At first it was...fun. He could let loose, let the tension melt from his shoulders as he flirted between worshippers and petitioners.

And then it very much wasn’t fun. This was  _ wrong _ . He’d been summoned, invoked--but the ritual was wrong. He spun around, trying to find an escape and failing. 

“That’s not Persephone,” someone said as the strands of the twisted ritual lashed into his arms and crushed him to the ground.

Dimly, Mitch could appreciate that by invoking the goddess’ name, Persephone would know what had happened.

Which was, of course, what happened.

Mitch had never been so glad to see Persephone in his life.

The Persephone he knew from the Overworld wasn’t  _ soft _ , not really, but was made of trees and flowers and sunshine. Mitch had known logically that the Underworld’s Persephone was sharper edged, but he hadn’t expected the full-on hell-form.

Connor had definitely been taking lessons from Freddie on how to be terrifying. The whole billowing robes, bright rays of light, howling wind thing? Definitely terrifying when Persephone came  _ screaming  _ out of a portal.

It took Mitch a second to realize that the screaming wasn’t Persephone, but rather the tortured souls the god had belted around their waist.

He shuddered.

The demigods were slower to react than Mitch was; their half-human reflexes were blurred by sleep and confusion over the Queen of Hell bursting into their campground. Mitch did give the redhead points for being quick on the draw, though Persephone probably won on the style scale with the flaming sword.

Persephone shredded the demigods, ripping their souls from their human bodies, and pulling the life from everything in a fifteen-meter radius. Then Persephone turned their attention to Mitch.

“Dionysus,” they whispered, reaching out a hand. “Brother.”

Mitch nodded, then sighed deeply as Persephone melted into Connor.

“You’re alright?” Connor asked, hurrying towards Mitch. “Nevermind. Tell me when we’re back in the Underworld. I can’t be gone long with Freddie and Auston both under.”

Something felt downright wrong as Mitch tumbled through the portal after Connor. Mitch didn't think it was just his sense of balance, because Connor immediately doubled over in agony. Around them, thorny plants burst up from the ashy soil of the underworld, then crumpled into withered husks.

“Connor!”

Connor screamed, the air around him thickening, Persephone visibly simmering under his skin. He took a deep breath and did something Mitch couldn’t quite identify, the tendrils of darkness curling back into his body.

“Well, fuck,” he said.

“What?”

Connor exhaled sharply through his nose. “I can’t leave the Underworld.”

Mitch blinked. “What? Of course you can.”

“Not with Hades the way he is.” Connor grimaced, rubbing at his forehead. “You know how Hades and Persephone are equals?”

“Yeees?” Mitch said, drawing the word out.

“With Hades unable to fulfill his role, the power of the Underworld falls to Persephone. It was bad enough I left already. Three souls escaped, and every part of me is screaming to bring them back, but if I leave more can escape. There always needs to be a power on the throne.” Connor made another face, one where Mitch could see the skeletal outline of Persephone beneath Connor’s skin. “Maintaining this form is hard enough. Mitch, I need you to help me fix this.”

“I don’t--what can I do?”

Connor’s form shuddered again. “Help,” he managed. “Mitch, please.”

“Connor?”

“Mitch,  _ go _ . We can talk later, but you can’t be here right now.  _ Go _ !”

Terrified, Mitch fled, hearing Persephone howl in pain behind him.

The Underworld knew when Persephone was upset, and by extension, Mitch knew too. The hallways shrank around him, the corridors darkening and filling with rotting vines that crawled along the walls.

Connor was  _ screaming _ .

Mitch shuddered and went to find a place to hide.

◉◎◈◎◉●

It took a while, but Connor came to find Mitch. Mitch had gone to Auston’s office and started...well, he wasn’t sure. He sorted through papers mindlessly, trying to see if there was anything Auston had clued in on.

He felt desperate. He was Dionysus, the god of orchards and fertility; the god of festivals and theater. What was he doing here in the Underworld, looking through the personal files of the god of death? How could he possibly think he could belong?

Connor broke Mitch’s reverie with a soft knock on the door.

“Hey.”

Mitch turned, swivelling Auston’s ridiculously comfortable office chair to see Connor, pale and shaken but definitely in control, standing at the door.

“Are you okay?”

Connor shrugged. “Better now. Persephone is...displeased, but she’s satisfied with the security of the Underworld right now. Enough that she doesn’t think everything is going to fall apart.”

Mitch shifted awkwardly. “That’s good.”

Connor leaned against Auston’s desk. “What made you run?” Connor asked.

Mitch blushed. “It’s...It sounds so silly now.”

“If it scared you, it’s not silly.”

“I dreamed of him,” Mitch admitted. “My dreamcatcher caught it. I wouldn’t have remembered otherwise.”

Connor nodded in sympathy. He was distant now, always mindful of Persephone’s duties and the current weakness of the Underworld. Persephone was certainly more dominant, and given the state of things the deity had less use for a human guise. 

But Mitch found it easier to talk to Connor than Dionysus did to Persephone. Several thousand years ago their paths had diverged, and then converged again as friends, primarily in their mortal forms. And Connor was as of yet not willing to give up the only family member he had who didn’t act like he had lost his mind.

“Did he say anything?”

“Mm,” Mitch said. “Mostly we were dancing.”

He jolted, knocking over half the items on Auston’s desk. “ _ Fuck _ .”

“What?”

“Why didn’t I think of it?” Mitch swore in a string of Latin, scrabbling for each of his pockets. His hands were trembling. “The Dreamcatcher,” he said. “Do you think--”

Connor’s eyes widened. “Yes, yes, oh my god. How could I forget--try it.”

“I don’t know how it’ll work.” Mitch focused on the glass orb. Dreamcatcher was perhaps a misleading word, but Mitch had nothing better to describe it. It was a small orb, opaque and lacy glass that never warmed in his hands. As with anything made by a god, it was nigh-unbreakable. Mitch had carried it in his pocket for centuries; it had no scratches, chips, or cracks, remaining as pristine as the day Auston had given it to him. “I’ve only used it to look at dreams, never to--never to actually try to talk to Auston.”

“But there’s no reason it shouldn’t work, right?” Connor pressed.

“I don’t know,” Mitch admitted. “Now shut up and let me try.”

Connor patted Mitch on the shoulder and took a couple of steps backwards, still lingering at the edge of the room.

Mitch cupped the Dreamcatcher in his palm and closed his eyes. He thought of the dream, of what Auston felt like, and barely noticed the Dreamcatcher starting to glow. He noticed when it started to burn his palms, making him open his eyes and stare in wonder at the tiny glass orb, and then--a portal bloomed in front of them, edged in silver fire.

Mitch dropped the Dreamcatcher in shock and the portal snapped closed.

The Dreamcatcher bounced across the floor with a delicate chime like the ringing of bells.

“Holy fuck,” Connor said.

“Do you think I can go through? And come back out again?”

Connor worried at his bottom lip. “You might get stuck. You’ve never tried this before, right?”

Mitch gave Connor a dirty look. “So if I do get stuck, what happens?”

“Well, then I think I’d have to tell the Overworld at that point.” Connor grimaced. “But we might be getting there anyways. If you don’t go in, what else can we do? It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Mitch went and collected the Dreamcatcher. By now it was as cool as it had ever been, as if it had never been hot.

“So I guess we should...plan for the worst, I guess. Before I go in. In case I can’t get out.”

“Try to find Thanatos in whatever form he’s in. See if he’s capable of looking for Hades--or if you can find Hades. Find out what they know and what they can do, if they remember who sent them there. And then if you get stuck--I guess, try to get to me? I’ll keep an eye on your body. If you’re under more than a day I’ll know you’re stuck.”

Mitch swallowed. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to go--to my bedroom. I’ll do it there.”

Connor leaned forward and swept Mitch into a hug. “Be safe. Or as safe as you can be doing what you’re doing.”

Mitch kissed Connor on the cheek. “Aren’t I always?”

Connor clung for a little longer, and Mitch felt rather than thought that if he went under, Connor would have lost his husband, his best friend, and his brother all in one winter. Small wonder he was so reluctant to let Mitch go.

When Connor finally did pull back, his face was composed and stoic. “Go. Find out what you can.”

Mitch went.

The walk down the winding hallways seemed infinite, the Dreamcatcher cool against his palm. Mitch took in the textures, the feel of the Underworld around him, wondering if he would see them again, or if he’d be trapped in the Dreamworld indefinitely.

It was a long walk. But eventually, Mitch was in the bedroom he shared with Mitch.

Auston was asleep there. He’d collapsed at his desk, but Connor and Mitch had moved him to his bed, if only so it seemed more like he was sleeping than dead.

It took a lot to kill a god, but it wasn’t impossible.

Mitch dimmed the lamps, as if he were going to bed. He changed into soft pants and a loose top; if he was going to be stuck in the Dreamworld, his physical body might as well be comfortable.

Out of preparations to make, Mitch sat on the bed next to Auston’s still body, tucked under a heavy velvet blanket. He smoothed his hand over Auston’s cheek, carded his fingers through his hair. “Please come find me,” he whispered. Then, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the Dreamcatcher.

The portal opened again, edged in the same silver fire. Mitch stood from the bed, giving Auston a quick kiss. Then, still holding onto the Dreamcatcher, he stepped through, casting a nervous look behind him. 

As if sensing how nervous he was, the portal closed with a whisper instead of the sharp crackle of silver fire.

“You’re in the Dreamworld,” Mitch murmured to himself. “Well, fuck.”

The world he was in was a field in the time between night and day, golden grasses gently swaying in the breeze, the air warm and heavy, perfumed with jasmine. Mitch got the sense this dreamworld would always be a time in between.

“Auston?” he called. “Thanatos?”

Gods were perceptive to their names; usually uttering a god’s name would draw their attention, much less directly calling it aloud. Saying it aloud had had no effect in the waking world, but perhaps the Dreamworld was different.

There was no response, just a lazy stirring of the breeze.

Very few times in his life had Mitch ever been anywhere without his satyrs and nymphs within easy calling distance. In this dreamworld, he felt utterly alone.

There was a dusty gravel road, and Mitch decided to follow it; Dream logic was simpler in that it usually guided him where he needed to go, especially dreams sent by Hypnos.

His intuition worked: a mile down the road, in the twilight that never darkened or the dawn that never rose, he saw a prone form lying under a tree, on a checkered picnic blanket.

Mitch’s heart rate spiked until he could feel his pulse in his mouth.

“Auston?” he called, and then “Auston!”

Running down the short stretch of road to Auston felt like the longest run Mitch had ever felt. The air hadn’t changed, but it felt like molasses.

Mitch dropped to his knees beside the still body, and it was indeed Auston. He put his fingers to Auston’s neck, feeling for a pulse, a breath--and Auston’s eyes blinked open hazily.

“Hello beautiful,” Auston said, drowsily smiling up at Mitch. “Are you a dream?”

Mitch took Auston’s hands in his own. “Auston, I need you to try to focus for me. I’m not a dream. What happened to you? How did you get here?”

“I slept, sweetheart,” Auston said, sighing lazily and relaxing even further into his blanket. “I’m the god of dreams.”

“But you can’t wake up,” Mitch insisted. “Auston, think. Have you seen Hades?”

Auston frowned, eyes fluttering closed again. He opened them when Mitch shook him. “Hades? No. He’s busy. Been busy. I’m tired, Mitch.”

“I know. But you have to  _ try  _ to find me.”

“Find me,” Auston echoed. His eyes suddenly sharpened and he sat bolt upright. “Mitch, we were poisoned, you have to--” he sighed and sank back. “Goodbye, Mitch.”

“Who poisoned you?” Mitch demanded, but Auston’s head only lolled to the side as he fell back asleep.

Mitch pushed to his feet. It was clear he wouldn’t be getting any other answers from Auston. He focused on the Dreamcatcher in his hands, and the portal bloomed open again, this time edged in a fire the color of oxidized copper.

When he stepped through the portal back into the waking world, the Dreamcatcher shattered in his hands. Suddenly exhausted, Mitch barely managed to make it to the bed before he collapsed next to Auston in a dreamless sleep of his own

◉◎◈◎◉●

Connor was trembling when he returned to his and Freddie’s chambers. Everything was falling apart. He wasn’t fixing anything properly. Auston was asleep. Mitch was in the Dreamworld, and who knew if he would return. Freddie was  _ more  _ than just asleep. He looked dead to Connor. He was laid out on the bed, propped up on the pillows like he’d been watching the tv or playing his stupid video games, and from a distance it looked like he really was just napping. It was when Connor got closer that he noticed the shadowed bruises under Freddie’s eyes and the way his skin seemed translucent. 

With a sigh, Connor sat on the bed next to his husband and reached out to pet through his hair.    
“I need you to come back to me,” he begged softly. “I thought I could do it, but I can’t. I can’t do anything right without you here, baby, I  _ need you _ .” He bit his bottom lip, shaking his head and taking his hand away. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, and I need you to help me. We’re supposed to be doing this together, Fred.”

Connor stood up and fisted his hands in his own hair before beginning a short pace along the side of the bed. “I must have messed up the protection spells. I...this is all my fault. I did this.” He turned on his heel and rubbed at his forehead like it was hurting him to think about it. “This wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so fucking  _ weak _ .” 

He scrubbed his hands over his face, making a wounded noise. “Wake up, Freddie, come  _ on _ . This isn’t fair anymore. Just. Wake up for me, please?”

Freddie didn’t move. He didn’t open his eyes or smile or tell Connor to shut up or that he was being too loud. He was still, like every other soul in the Underworld waiting for something to happen when nothing ever would.

Something about Freddie just lying there made something snap inside of Connor. Freddie would fight back. Freddie wouldn’t let him yell, Freddie wouldn’t just let this happen.

“You’d better come back,” Connor snarled. “Don’t you fucking dare leave me like this, don’t you  _ dare _ .” He punched Freddie in the shoulder in a moment of supreme rage, felt bad about it for like, two seconds, then did it again. “ _ Wake up _ , you son of a bitch, don’t you leave me! I’ll never forgive you if you fucking leave me.” Tears leaked down his face unbidden, and he scrubbed them away angrily. “I’ll kill you myself if you don’t wake up, I’ll do it, I  _ will _ .”

Connor crumpled in on himself, fisting his hands in his lap. “I miss you,” he said, voice broken, and reached for Freddie. Connor held onto his husband, burying his face in Freddie’s still-breathing chest, taking comfort in the fact that he couldn’t be dead if he was breathing. He sobbed, heavy gurgling sobs, dampening Freddie’s sleep-shirt. Connor didn’t know how long he cried for, in the end; he only knew that Freddie wasn’t responding and that he felt so goddamn alone.

Eventually his cries slowed, his heavy heaving sobs reducing to a smaller sniffle.

“I’ll come back when this is over,” Connor promised when he could manage to speak without his voice wobbling. He swiped at the wetness under his eyes and pressed a soft kiss to Freddie’s unresponding mouth. “I can’t do this, knowing you’re like this. I’ll come back when it’s over, I promise.”

Connor bit his lip and slid his wedding band off and repeated the process with his husband’s. Gently he swapped their rings, putting Freddie’s battered gold one on his ring finger and his own silver one on Freddie’s hand. A second kiss, and then Connor was pulling away.

“I love you,” he said, and swept out of their chambers. He forced himself to keep from looking back, knowing if he did, he'd just crawl back into bed and stay there until the Underworld crumbled around them.

“Someone has come to bring you a message,” a passing shade whispered. “Psychopompos.”

Connor wiped his cheeks, checked his hair, and straightened his shoulders.

Hermes, who helped bring souls to the Underworld in his form of Psychopompos, knew something had happened--why else would he be there?

Of the Overworld gods, Connor liked him best, after Mitch. He saw and understood what the Underworld was, unlike his fellow Olympians. He saw, and he knew, and he was usually willing to bring messages to Hades when Perephone was in the Overworld without much of a fuss.

So when he arrived to talk to Connor wasn’t totally surprising, but it also wasn’t exactly expected. Connor dismissed his attendants and brought Hermes--or Tyson, Connor supposed, in this human form--to one of the sitting rooms. Tyson waved off refreshments when they were offered, so Connor just asked bluntly “what are you doing here?”

“Your friend warned me something was wrong,” Tyson said, carefully not looking at Connor. “So I’m warning you. Three souls are not where they should be, and those on high know.”

Connor sucked in a breath. “You’re certain?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t.” Tyson turned to Connor. “I speak now to my friend, not to the Queen of the Underworld, you understand.”

Connor nodded. They would have to avoid names; if those who ruled Olympus knew, it wouldn’t be good to draw their attention by using their names. “As a friend--is there anything you know that you can tell me?”

Tyson shook his head and leaned back in his seat. “They know I come here. And I spend more time flitting around than I do sitting the throne. But gossip…” Tyson gave Connor a meaningful look. “I hear things. And someone is furious that her son is being manipulated.”

Connor started flicking through his mental rolodex of goddesses with sons. “Anyone I know?”

“I’m amazed she hasn’t stormed down here herself, but I think she’d poison the atmosphere.” Tyson winked. “As much as there is one down here, anyways.”

Connor’s mind raced. A goddess--of poison, if Tyson was telling the truth. “A daughter of the night?” he asked. Better to not say her name.

“One of your own,” Tyson confirmed. “But she’s not the mastermind.”

Connor flapped a hand. “It’s still somewhere to start. A son, you said?”

“He’s not the one who died. His brother is.” Tyson got to his feet and stretched. “Good luck.”

“It’s not luck that saves you, down here,” Connor countered.

“You can’t say it wouldn’t hurt, though.” Tyson bounced on the balls of his feet, and then was gone.

Connor, in turn, went to find Mitch.

He found him in one of the gardens, looking at the jewelled grapes that grew here where there was no sunlight. He’d woken from his experience with the Dreamworld to a broken Dreamcatcher and a horrified Connor, able to relay that Thanatos, at least, had been poisoned and seemed incapable of waking himself.

“What’s happened?” Mitch asked, not even looking away from the grapes. “I saw our tricky half-brother leaving.”

“There are three missing souls.”

“Come again?” Mitch asked, turning. He looked exhausted and tired.

“There are three missing souls that we’ll need to find, and hopefully from there we’ll figure out who’s doing this. Tyson said it was a demigod influenced by someone above.”

“Fuck. Demigods are the worst. You think it had to do with those that summoned me?”

Connor sighed, reaching out to pluck some of the grapes and let the gemstones flow through his fingers. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Mitch, you have to find the three missing souls,” Connor said. He knew that the bags under his eyes had only gotten darker and deeper, the thorns in his crown spikier, the slump of his shoulders more pronounced. “At least--you have to start there. I think if we can find the three missing souls, that will right the Underworld enough that Freddie can wake up.”

Mitch nodded. “Do you--do you know anything about those souls? Who they are, where they might be?”

Connor grimaced. “I’ll do some digging, but--do you know how many souls are drifting around the Underworld? I don’t have the finesse Freddie or Auston do. I can tell the balance is off, and I’m guessing three because traditionally we work in triads, but I couldn’t tell you who or where.” He sighed. “Based off of what Hermes told me, I’m assuming at least one is a demigod, or related to a demigod, but that’s still a very large pool.”

“So where should I start?” Mitch asked.

The ground rumbled, all of the Underworld shaking. Both Connor and Mitch stumbled.

“Look at where the demigods broke in. That’s probably a decent place to start. I’ll start looking through records. I think I can get--I think the Erinyes still owe me a favor, but it’ll be hell getting them to look at paperwork. The Judges will enjoy looking through archives.”

“That’s still only seven of you to look at millenia of death records.”

Connor shrugged. “Not millenia. We’ll start with the last fifty years; if it’s demigods who broke into Hades, it’ll be someone the demigods knew personally.”

“That’s still nearly three billion deaths.”

“Better than the sum total of all of humanity. We can branch out into the past hundred years if we need to, but I’ll bet anything we find all three missing souls died in the last two decades.”

Mitch nodded. “So you’ll start there? And I’ll go above and start just...feeling around?”

“Unless you have a better idea,” Connor said. “Right. What will you need?”

◉◎◈◎◉●

The Underworld wasn’t exactly a warm place at the best of times, but with Thanatos and Hades down for the count and Persephone focusing on holding things together, it wasn’t exactly somewhere Mitch felt wholly comfortable.

That was how he ended up in a cafe by a seaside town in Ecuador, surrounded by sunshine and plants, and plenty of people. It was easy to make their eyes just slide over him, to think of him as nothing worth noticing.

There were lots of tourists, but no mortal in this particular cafe had anything more than the barest spark of the divine. He wouldn’t be noticed among the natural divine and the bustle of everyday life.

“What’s happening here?” Mitch whispered to himself. He rustled in his pockets until he produced a napkin and a pen. “Auston and Freddie are asleep. Okay. Why?”

He passed his hand over the napkin, willing it to become a sheet of writing paper. At the top, he wrote  _ Auston _ and  _ Freddie _ , and after a second added  _ Mitch _ and  _ Connor _ .

A blink, and they changed into Thanatos and Hades, Dionysus and Persephone.

“Auston and Freddie were affected, but Connor and I weren’t,” he murmured. “What did they do that we didn’t?”

He mentally went back over everything they’d done in the days before everything changed. Connor and Freddie had been constructing a new garden. Auston had spent most of the day working, and Mitch had been attempting to distract him. The only thing they had in common was a dinner at the end of the day before Freddie hadn’t woken back up. They’d all eaten the same meal; food from the Overworld, since Mitch refused to eat Underworld food and Connor was still vegetarian.

“What could it be?” he hissed, tugging at his hair. With a wave of his hand, he folded up the sheet of paper and vanished it into a pocket dimension, and went to find his nymphs and satyrs. They would be in a field of wild beauty, preferably one where grapes grew, and there were a fair few of those in Ecuador, luckily.

When he found a suitable field, the nymphs fluttered around him, cooing over him and tugging at locks of his hair. He was a familiar presence to them, even in his human guise. 

“I need a favor,” he said, letting himself be coaxed into a seated position on the grass. “Will you help me, friends?”

They chirruped at him, looking at him with big eyes.

“I’m looking for someone,” Mitch said. “Once I know his name, I’ll need help. But for now, let me know if you sense anything wrong. If you sense death where it shouldn’t be, come tell me. Don’t touch it. Just tell me.”

The nymphs murmured their agreement. They were familiar with death, because things in nature died. They knew when death was natural or unnatural; they’d be able to tell him.

Mitch relaxed in the sunlight, mind still racing. He was thinking through where to start when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Handy inventions these humans had come up with.

**Connor** : Patrick Marleau, hockey player. Died in a car accident, March 18 of this year in San Jose, California. His oldest son is an Aphrodite demigod.

**Connor** : if you find him, try to coax him into remembering he’s dead. He was a good soul, destined for the Isles, just finished his third life. He’ll be peaceful. Easy one to start with.

Mitch sent Connor a series of emoji. For as much as Connor spent half his time in the Overworld, he still hadn’t gotten the hang of texting, and emojis completely puzzled him. Mitch figured the emojis would keep him confused for a few minutes, a distraction from whatever frenzy he was surely whipping himself into.

It was a quick trip to get himself to San Jose, but there were a million places Patrick Marleau could be. Mitch figured he’d start with the places a hockey player might be, and work his way out from there. The big arena where the San Jose hockey team played was a bust, filled with vibrant life that was so wildly different from the cool death of the Underworld.

Mitch couldn’t help it, but he spilled a little fertility into the locker room. There’d be a bumper crop of babies from this team.

He wandered the halls; there were plenty of people roaming around, but none had the distinct coolness of someone who had risen from the Underworld.

“A hockey player,” he murmured to himself, and then googled up a list of ice rinks within an hour drive.

It took him three tries, but eventually Mitch found the missing soul sitting in the stands of a junior hockey league arena, watching wistfully as the kids on the ice whipped through practice drills.

“Mr. Marleau?” Mitch asked, taking a seat on the cool metal bleachers. The building was cold; he shivered a little.

“Call me Pat,” the soul said. “You come to take me back to heaven?”

Mitch nodded. “You know you’re not supposed to be here?”

“I guessed when everyone told me I look just like this guy they used to know who died. Even my sons didn’t think I was me.” Pat had lines around his eyes, the kind worn in by laughter. “It wasn’t hard to figure out I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Do you know how you got here?” Mitch asked.

Pat looked surprised. “I remember being--someplace warm, but  _ alive _ . And then I was sitting by the side of I-80 and had no idea how I’d gotten there.”

“It was worth a shot.” Mitch fumbled in his pocket and held out the Dreamcatcher. “Can you touch this, by any chance?”

Pat reached out and laid his hand on it. “Oh,” he said. “It’s warm,” and then he was gone.

Mitch stared at the place where the man had been, completely devoid of energy. In his pocket, his phone buzzed.

**Connor** : whatever you did it worked. Marleau is back in the Underworld.

**Connor** : why did you send me a flower bouquet and a crying emoji?

Mitch exhaled, letting relief wash over him. The Dreamcatcher had sent Patrick Mareleau back to the Underworld, and had solved at least one of their problems. 

Mitch embraced the  _ idea  _ of adventure, but in practice? He was scared beyond shitless.

The next souls were going to be a challenge. Mitch didn’t have a name, a location, or even a general idea of where to start.

Mitch was not a detective by nature, but he did know who to ask and where to start. Knowing that Patrick Marleau had been a peaceful death gave him hope that the rest would be as easy; and he had some favors to cash in.

The Olympian gods never bothered with such crude things as money. When they were millenia old, the most valuable currency was much more valuable--gossip, secrets, and favors.

Dionysus was a useful god to find favor from. If a favored mortal needed a child or a fertility blessing, Dionysus could make sure something happened for them. If a god needed to seduce a mortal--either ensure a pregnancy or prevent one--Dionysus was the one to call. He was discreet, unaffiliated with any of the big feuds, and slower to anger than many of the other gods. He didn’t hold grudges, either.

That meant when Mitch needed help, he had an array of sources he could turn to. There wasn’t a single god on Olympus who didn’t owe him a favor of some variety.

He decided the best god to turn to would be Aphrodite; he hadn’t cashed in any of his many favors with her, and she knew every human on earth in some capacity. If someone had resurrected someone out of love, she’d know.

He met her in downtown Nashville, across from a mural where couples were taking selfies.

“People do foolish things for love,” she said, coming up behind him. Her human form was petite, blonde and well-coiffed, genteel mannered and elegantly dressed. This form went by Carrie, if Mitch was remembering correctly. “Including you, it would seem.”

Mitch smiled and bent to press a kiss to her cheek. They had a connection, the two of them--love and fertility were intricately connected in many ways.

“It seems to have worked out.”

She sighed. “You know, if you ever decide it isn’t, your mother and I know just the man for you--”

“I don’t.” He met her eyes and stared her down. “I am very happy in my relationship, as you should know.”

Carrie studied him, and a smile crept across her face. “You know, I do believe you are.” She retrieved a business card from her heavy leather handbag. She gave it to him, a knowing smile on her face. “I don’t like when someone changes my plans, but for you, my dear, I can make an exception. A little luck. Give your beloved that, and you will always be able to find him. A gift. No favors needed.”

“Thank you, Carrie,” Mitch said. He put the card into his pocket. “I do need to call in a favor, though.”

“Well, I assumed. You’ll be escorting me to lunch?”

Mitch offered his elbow. “I’d be honored.”

The place Carrie took them to was elegant, burnished silver and white tablecloths, with quiet, efficient waiters. She ordered for them both in fluent French, and kept a steady gaze on Mitch the whole way.

“As much as I approve of love,” she said, sipping from her wine glass. She didn’t even leave a lipstick print; the goddess of love and beauty would never dare do something like that without pure intentionality. “This is all a bit much. You’ll find one Tyler Ennis in Edmonton, Canada. I assume he’s the one you’re looking for.”

“How do you know I’m looking for anyone?”

Carrie raised an eyebrow. “You’re certainly not looking for something in that Underworld you frequent now, are you? No, you’re looking for him, I’m sure. Tyler Ennis.” She set her glass down and tapped his bread plate, opening a small shimmering portal to show a blond man with a wide smile. “He was one of my son’s more, ah. Interesting ideas. Eros thought it funny to infatuate him with someone he could never have. I knew he’d gone to your realm when Eros had a week-long sulk about it, so I’ve been keeping tabs on his intended target.”

“Who happens to be in Edmonton.”

“Exactly. Infatuation done by Eros doesn’t just wear off. He’ll be there.”

Mitch studied the form in the portal. “Was he good?”

Carrie blinked. “Pardon?”

“Was he a good mortal?”

She considered. “He might have been one of my favorites, if Eros had not chosen to play a game with him, but he also might have gone completely unnoticed. I don’t think he was much of anything. He performed no great feats in my name, but I am not offended by his existence.”

Carrie signalled the waiter, and a soup course appeared on their table ferried by efficient hands. She gestured for Mitch to start eating.

“You’ll tell me when he’s returned to the Underworld for good, will you? I have plans for Leon Draisaitl that do not include Tyler Ennis.” She picked up her soup spoon. “Now, you’ll be staying for the rest of the meal now that business is concluded, yes? I haven’t gotten to talk to you in so very long.”

Tyler Ennis wouldn’t go far in the hour or so it would take to have lunch with Carrie. Mitch leaned back in his seat, toasting Carrie with his own wine glass. “What’s the latest romance to sweep Olympus?”

Carrie’s delighted laugh brought adoring sighs from all corners of the restaurant.

◉◎◈◎◉●

“Tyler Ennis?” Connor said, sounding absolutely baffled when Mitch called him after lunch with Carrie. “That’s not a name I’m familiar with. You’re sure?”

“No, but Aphrodite seemed confident it was him.”

Connor sighed gustily. “Okay. Do you know anything else about him?”

“Aphrodite’s son targeted him personally, apparently.” Mitch looked around the city streets of Edmonton, already blurry with windchill despite the fact that it was barely October. “I have no idea where to start looking other than he’s from Edmonton and he was cursed to love someone he couldn’t have.”

There was a silence. “Hang on. Let me look something up.”

“Yeah, take your time, it’s not like I’m in fucking  _ Edmonton _ .”

“Calm your knickers.” Connor made a weird noise. “Interesting. If you’re right, we’ll have had Patrick Marleau from Elysium and now Tyler Ennis from the Meadows.”

“So they weren’t taken from the same place?”

Connor hummed. “That’s the thing. They’d been sorted but they never made it to their final destination.”

“Anything else in common in their lives?”

“Marleau was a hockey player who died in Pittsburgh of cancer complications; Ennis was an accountant who died in a car accident in Ottawa. I don’t think they ever met, but if they did ever cross paths it was brief, and not something I would say would lead them to break out of the Underworld together.” Connor was silent for a moment. Mitch played with the edge of his sleeve. “Oh, that’s interesting. They died at the same time.”

“I thought you said Marleau died in Pittsburgh and Ennis in Ottawa.”

“I did. They died at the same exact second in time.”

Mitch tried to process that. “How?”

“They died at the exact same moment. It’s not entirely uncommon on a planet with seven billion people, but to have both of them returned to the Overworld--that’s interesting. Makes me wonder if our third missing soul also died at the exact same moment.”

“Can you check?”

Connor snorted. Mitch could practically envision him in his ratty pyjamas, sitting on the bed next to Freddie’s unmoving body and flipping through the paper files that Hades still used. “Mitch, this is Hell. We’re always at least three months behind on our paperwork. I only have these because Freddie was looking at them personally. I’ll start looking but you’ll probably get a better idea by checking human obituaries.”

“But you think that’s the link?”

“You have a better idea?” Connor sighed. “Sorry if I’m a bit snippy. It’s better here with one of the souls back, but--I’m not Hades. There’s only so much I can do to hold everything together, and we have a deadline approaching.”

“You’re powerful enough. If you refused to return, there’s not much they could do.” Mitch could practically hear Connor’s grimace of distaste through the phone.

“I’m not just dread Persephone,” Connor reminded Mitch. “I am exalted Kore. I am both. I need to be both.”

“There have been poor summers before,” Mitch said quietly. “But there has never been a time without death.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Connor sighed, and changed the subject. “Do you have any leads? Anyone you can ask?”

Mitch grimaced. “I have an idea, but I’m not happy about it.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Mitch looked around at the streets of Edmonton. “I think I just have to bite the bullet on this one. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“If you say so.”

Mitch was not proud of his plan. It was not his favorite plan he’d ever had, but it was a plan. And a plan was better than not having a plan.

First, though, he had to track down Apollo. He was a lot of places a lot of the time, but Mitch was fairly certain he’d have luck in New York. He had to check three churches, a concert hall, and a theater on Broadway, but eventually he found him in an auditorium on a university campus.

Mitch sat down next to Apollo, who was polishing a beautifully wrought violin. His human form tended to go by Gabe these days; he was tall, blond and Swedish, all traits that Apollo was partial to.

“You need a favor,” Gabe said, not looking up.

“Cashing in a favor,” Mitch corrected. “Come on, I’ve done plenty for you. It’s your turn to do me something. I need help finding someone.”

“So you ask me. Interesting.”

“I want to ask your sister.”

“Probably a better choice,” Gabe said, finally looking up. “But she won’t talk to you, will she?”

Mitch just shrugged loosely.

Gabe shifted, and his human features sharpened. The grin on his face was nearly wolfish “Have you considered asking literally anyone else?”

“I don’t blame her, but I do need her to hunt someone down.” Mitch shrugged. “And you know her better than just about anyone.”

“You assume she’s talking to me right now.” Gabe gave Mitch a sidelong look. “You know, I’d be willing to track her down if you were willing to do me a favor.”

“Like helping one of your girls get pregnant?”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “I can do that just fine on my own. No, I could use some help talking to your fiance.”

Mitch tried not to react; the Olympians still didn’t know Thanatos was lost in the Dreamworld. “You could always talk to Hermes.”

“As if Hermes wants to spend any more time in the Underworld than he has to. I’d like him to hold off on collecting one of my favorites.”

“I’ll need a name,” Mitch said, hoping Auston wouldn’t hold this particular favor against him. One mortal having a slightly longer life would be worth keeping the cosmos in order, probably.

Gabe smiled wistfully. “Nicklas Backstrom.”

Mitch kept looking expectantly at Gabe.

“He’s a hockey player?”

Mitch just kept staring.

“Just ask your fiance. And I’ll see if I can arrange a meeting with Artemis. Just--just google him, alright? He’s fantastic.” Gabe leaned over and gave Mitch a kiss on the cheek. “Go, scurry along. If Artemis wants to talk to you, she will.”

Mitch wasn’t sure if he hoped she would or wouldn’t talk to him.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Persephone sat regal on their throne, holding court in front of the restless Underworld. 

In all the thousands of years Persephone had ruled beside Hades, they had never sat the throne alone, and certainly never so close to the turn of the seasons. The shades were afraid, and Persephone was exhausted.

“Hades is not cruel,” their voice echoed, all the incarnations of Persephone speaking with the weight of the Underworld behind their words. “We will hear your petition.”

“Does the dread king not sit his own throne?” someone called from the back of the room. The voice was dark and crackly, the sound of bones grinding over each other in agony.

Persephone scowled. “We are Despoina Praxidike and Persephone, Aristi Chthonia and Kore Soteira. Do not question our place on this throne. You are here at our pleasure.”

A second tall figure pushed her way through the throng. “Respect your queen, sister. She sits on the throne.”

Persephone bared her teeth. “Ker.”

The crowd gave Ker a wide berth when Persephone uttered her name, recoiling in shock and fear. Ker cackled; she was an aspect of violent death, a sister of Thanatos, and one of the only functioning deathsgods at the moment.

Persephone shuddered minutely. Ker was the death suffered by the tortured, by those who died screaming in agony. In her human form, she was a petite woman who called herself Ana; she ate her meat bloody and had a haunted look in her eyes.

“Queen Persephone,” Ker sang. “My sister has something to share with you.”

Persephone’s gaze landed on Achlys, the goddess of poison and the mist of death; she was misery and suffering, pain and grief. Her human form was twin to Ker, though she went by Alex. Persephone saw much less of Achlys than she did Ker; Achlys walked the earth where Ker haunted the Underworld.

“I do not want to,” Achlys said, in her rough voice. “But my sisters believe that we have exhausted all other options.”

Persephone raised an eyebrow. “Then speak, cousin.”

“My son has something to do with the crisis you are suffering.”

Persephone’s mind reeled. “You had a child with a mortal.”

Achlys met her eyes, unflinching. “I did.”

“I won’t ask how, or why. But your child walks the paths between the Overworld and the Underworld, does he not?”

“He does.”

Ker cackled. “Your own mother came to him in his grief, Queen Persephone. She has never forgiven your husband, and has taken advantage of my nephew to take her revenge, laying our brother low.”

The room grew dark, flickering with the pain and rage Persephone still felt over their mother’s inability to let the past be the past, no matter how many thousands of years had passed since.

“And you have proof?”

Achlys spat. “Do I need more proof than my word? You have no children, Praxidke.”

Persephone scowled at the invocation of Praxide; it was an aspect that rarely surfaced, but for Achlys to name the goddess in her role as the executor of judicial punishment and the exactor of vengeance. To use Praxidike when Persephone sat the throne was to imply the Queen of the Underworld was not fulfilling their duty.

“And yet I sit in judgement, Achlys. Speak, and I will listen.”

Achlys glared.

Instead, it was Ker who spoke.

“Your mother preyed on his weakness, and my nephew has used the gifts given to him by his mother to force his uncle to sleep, as well as your husband. He has taken his half-brother from the lands where he belongs. He is responsible for this, and you must bring him back to the grave.”

“You will do no such thing,” Achlys snapped. “He is grieving, but he was led to it by the elder goddess. Why wouldn’t the younger be in on it?”

Persephone stood, and the mortals witnessing the argument fell to their knees.

“Because I am more Death than I am Life by now, cousin, and I would burn the world down to have Hades back.”

Achlys, goddess in her own right, stood firm; Ker stood between them, though what she could do to prevent a fight would not be much.

“You expect me to believe that? You alone rule the Underworld now, Queen Persephone,” she hissed, her own dark skirts fanning around her. “Queen of hell, Goddess of rebirth. An Overworld goddess, plotting for millenia to dethrone the true powers of the Underworld.”

“I am Spring,” Persephone countered, the full force of their power in their words “I am Kore the maiden and Praxidke the avenger; I am neither and both, duality at it’s finest. I am neither man nor woman in this form. You are a deathsgod as I am, and you have known me for four millenia.”

Achlys took a step back and bowed her head. “And yet here we are.”

Persephone sat back down. “And yet here we are. I am doing what I can, but I know there are places you can go that I cannot. If it was your son using your gifts, then you can reverse them. Awaken Thanatos and allow the restoration of order.”

Achlys didn’t look up, remaining silent.

Ker shook her head. “He sleeps. I’ve tried many times. There is nothing I can do myself to wake him.” She opened her eyes to look at her sister. “We’ve both tried. Matthew respects his uncle, if nothing else. Thanatos will not awaken.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

Ker shook her head. “On my word, Queen Persephone, we cannot wake our brother. We cannot find them where Hypnos walks; I cannot find them where Thanatos works. Death sleeps, Queen Persephone, and I fear I too will slip under soon.”

“Is there anything as can be done?”

Ker spread her hands expansively. “We can only try, your Majesty. But you must find my nephew.”

“Can I have his name?”

Achlys sighed. “Matthew. Matthew Tkachuk.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

In Edmonton, it was late winter, but still very, very cold. It was not a place Mitch had voluntarily spent a whole lot of time.

Despite Carrie’s advice it was still a very large modern city, and searching for one human amongst the 982,418 individual souls presently in the city would be quite the task. On the upside, Mitch had a pretty good idea of where Tyler Ennis would have gone. He had no idea about the third missing soul, but that was a bridge to cross when he got to it.

Artemis would be a great help, if Gabe had gotten through to her. As a general rule, Artemis and Dionysus avoided each other. The virgin goddess and the god of fertility had an unspoken agreement to leave each other the fuck alone.

Mitch wasn’t super popular in Olympus these days, but he was still the god of fertility. Despite his millenia-long friendship with Persephone and recent engagement to Thanatos, the Olympians still knew Dionysusas the giggling, lighthearted god who made parties fun. There were still those who didn’t believe he’d willingly choose Auston, either; Mitch hated it, but he could certainly use it to his advantage.

He could start with cashing in a few favors from Asclepius. The old man owed Dionysus a few favors for fertility miracles; and if anyone knew how to get Auston to wake, it would be him. He found a hospital and waited around the NICU for a while, until the god of medicines wandered by.

Mitch flagged him down.

Asclepius was an old man who had spent the last four millenia tending to the sick. He’d seen everything under the sun, from plagues to poisons to curses. If anyone could figure out what had happened to Auston, it would be Asclepius...if he was in a good mood and knew who he was at the moment. There was a reason Connor had been reluctant to ask him: the god of medicine took it personally when someone died under his care, and he often blamed Thanatos for interfering.

But desperate times called for desperate measures, and there was a chance Asclepius would listen to Dionysus where he wouldn’t listen to Persephone.

“Hi, sir, excuse me,” Mitch said when Asclepius turned to face him.

“Dr. Gretzky, but you can call me Wayne,” Asclepius boomed. His beard was impressive. “How can I help you, young man?”

Mitch blinked. He’d forgotten that sometimes Asclepius--Wayne--got a little too into living his human life these days, and had since the days of heroic medicine.

“It’s me, Dionysus,” he said, hoping Wayne would remember.

Wayne blinked. “Oh. Oh, hello. Is there something I can help you with? A delivery, perhaps?”

“Ah, no. It’s something more complicated than that. Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?”

Wayne waved a hand and the room froze. “We can talk here. No one will notice.”

Mitch shivered at the sight of all the mortals around him frozen in time, but Wayne didn’t seem to notice or care. “I have a medical mystery for you.”

“A mystery, eh?” Wayne stroked his beard. “A conventional doctor wouldn’t be able to solve it?”

“Absolutely no chance at all,” Mitch confirmed, leaning in. “And it would write you into the legends once more.”

Wayne’s eyes widened. “Tell me more.”

“The God of Death and the God of the Underworld have fallen into a slumber and cannot be awoken. No one knows what happened to them, or how to fix it. If you were able to waken them, the Underworld would certainly owe you a great debt.”

Wayne eyed Mitch. “What kind of debt?”

“I’m sure that if you roused Hades from his slumber, he would have Thanatos pass over some of your most desperate cases. Thanatos would be grateful as well. Imagine, the deathsgods owing a debt to the god of medicine. You’d prove you had power over death itself.”

Wayne hummed to himself, nodding. “I would. And you said no one knows what’s wrong with them?”

“Not a clue,” Mitch confided.

Wayne flailed his arms and did an about turn, the hospital roaring back to life. “Paulina! Emma! We have a case!”

Mitch watched him go as he yelled for his daughters, and vanished through a door in the hall.

Mitch googled Nicklas Backstrom while sitting in the hospital ward, using a little power to make people’s eyes slide over him. Gabe had been right; he was an exceptional hockey player. Mitch was considering sending a couple more babies his way.

He had a good idea where he was going, but for now he dialled down to the Underworld to double check.

“Any information for me?” Mitch asked Connor. Or, at least, he hoped it was Connor. This conversation would be a lot more difficult if it was Persephone or, hells forbid,  _ Ker  _ who answered the phone.

It did give Mitch a bit of a chuckle to imagine the Queen Persephone, Despoina, Hagne, Kore Sotiera, aristi chthonia, immense and measureless, scowling in confusion at Connor’s outdated and tiny cell phone.

Thankfully, it was just a very frazzled sounding Connor who answered. “Uh, fuck. We’ve got a lead about a demigod whose sibling died. Matthew Tkachuk. It’s a whole situation. His step-mother is furious at the moment. Sorry, Asclepius just showed up with his daughters and there’s...a lot going on right now. He’s--sorry, can you not put that there? We don’t--is that an x-ray machine? How did you get that down here? We don’t have electricity!”

Mitch bit back a laugh. “Can you...check on where the dead brother was supposed to go?”

“Not at the moment. I’ll let you know as soon as possible. It might be a Keres that calls you back. I have...all this to deal with.”

The line dropped off; Mitch hoped that Connor had just hung up and the entire Underworld hadn’t just lost cell service for the rest of eternity. He also hoped that one of the Keres wasn’t going to call him back.

Mitch loved Auston, and all parts of Auston; it was just that Mitch mostly interacted with Thanatos and Persephone, if he wasn’t with their human forms. The Keres were Thanatos’ sisters, and it wasn’t like Mitch wanted to be on bad terms with his in-laws.

Mitch took a deep, shaky breath, and googled the Tkachuks. A hockey family, apparently. The younger son had died in a horrific freak accident; an on-ice head injury so statistically impossible it had literally never happened in the history of the game.

“No wonder the family is upset,” Mitch murmured. The photos from the funeral showed a brother and sister with twin expressions of incandescent rage and grief. “Now which one of you is the demigod?”

Any of the four remaining Tkachucks had a solid shot at being a demigod. Both of the parents were remarkable--the father was known for being one of the best in the game, and whoever got to the top without a touch of the divine? The mother was an equal candidate, known for her willingness to do anything for her children. And the living siblings--Taryn and Matthew--were utterly devoted to their brother.

It would depend on who their godly parent was. If one of the parents was half-god, the siblings would be quarter-god; but would that be enough to wreak havoc on the Underworld? Only the deathsgods and their offspring would be able to affect the Underworld so profoundly.

Mitch frowned. That was something he hadn’t considered: what if they were Hades’ own offspring? He never acknowledged his mortal children for Persephone’s sake. That would give an angry child motive.

His phone rang.

“Good news and bad news,” Connor said briskly when Mitch picked up. “Good news, I took care of the last of the cracks in the wards, and the Keres only mauled a few of the souls trying to escape.”

“That’s the good news?”

“Well, and we know Brady Tchakuk is totally human and had been planning on reincarnating for an attempt at the Isles of the Blessed.”

Mitch paused. “That’s not the bad news.”

“Well, it’s neutral news. The bad news is that his older brother Matthew is an Achlys demigod, and I’m pretty sure he’s one of the ones behind our breakout.”

Mitch sucked in a breath. The goddess of deadly poisons and despair was not a friendly god on the best of days, not quite a deathsgod and not quite welcome in the other realms either. It made sense, as unwelcome as the news was. At least it wasn’t one of Freddie’s bastard children, or else Connor would be a lot less calm. “And the other two souls?”

“I’m pretty sure Marleau was an accident, and Ennis a decoy of some sort. Or it was all an accident, considering they all died at the same moment.”

“So...I go find Matthew Tkachuk and I’ll find Brady?

Mitch could practically hear Connor’s frown. “Well, yeah. But Mitch--they have to have support from someone a little...higher up. An Achlys demigod couldn't have put Auston and Freddie to sleep, not without help.”

Mitch hung up. He rubbed at his forehead. He could only hope that Apollo would have passed on his message to Artemis.

Shaking his head, Mitch got up and headed to yet another hockey rink. Tyler Ennis, recently dead and then undead, had a crush. That crush played in the NHL, and the Oilers had a game tonight.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Ultimately, finding Tyler Ennis was easy enough once Mitch charmed his way into the press box and found a very dejected soul sitting in the corner and staring down at the ice.

“Am I dead?” he asked Mitch, who nodded. From his experience with Marleau, he wasn’t surprised that Ennis had caught on to his less than corporeal existence.

What surprised him was Ennis leaning back in his seat and sighing. “Can you send me back? This sucks.”

Mitch reached forward and touched his hand. “Believe you’re back there.”

“It’s that easy?” Ennis said, concentrating on a point in the distance. He dissolved into shadow, and then there was nothing where there had been a human soul.

Mitch’s phone buzzed.

**Connor** : Got him. Enjoy the game.

Mitch settled back into his seat. He might as well, with two souls returned to the Underworld and a solid lead on the third. He was mostly waiting for Artemis to get back in touch with him.

It was a decent game, the Oilers versus the Capitals. Mitch wasn’t exactly up on the latest hockey news, but he’d read about Apollo’s favored Backstrom. The Capitals were his team, so Mitch’s interest was piqued.

“What do you want?” a female voice said curtly during a break in play.

Mitch looked up. A tall, blond woman with features remarkably similar to Apollo’s human form stood there.

“Artemis?”

“Bea,” she snapped. “What do you want, Dionysus?”

“Mitch,” he corrected. “Maybe our avatars will get along better than our godly forms.”

“I’m sure,” she said, but her voice softened a little. Mitch offered her a smile. “Don’t look at me like that,  _ Isodaitês _ .”

Mitch rolled his eyes. He hadn’t been called that in living memory. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I give to all.”

Bea flipped him off. “You’ll keep your particular gifts away from me and mine if you know what’s good for you. What did you need from me?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“I assumed,” she sniped back. “Gabe implied as much.”

Mitch dug in his pockets, finding his phone. “His name is Matthew Tkachuck. He’s...interfered in my affairs. I need him found.”

She took the phone from him, lip curling up in disdain. “Your affairs, god of wine?”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “He’s given an offense to my fiance.” Silently, he apologized to Auston; putting Thanatos into a godly sleep was more than an offense, but he wasn’t about to tell Artemis, of all the deities, that the Underworld was in a state of tumult. He knew her; she would assume Hypnos had begun an affair with this mortal and Dionysus was seeking revenge. It was common enough on Olympus. “You wouldn’t understand,  _ Chitônê _ .”

She sniffed. “Perhaps. What will you give me for finding this...mortal?”

“Is the thrill of the hunt not enough?”

She eyed him. “I’ll take three favors. And you’ll leave me and mine alone for at least two centuries.”

“One favor. And fifty years.”

“Two favors and a century.”

“Done.” Mitch bared his teeth. “Happy hunting.”

“Oh, it will be,” Bea said, tossing his phone back to him. “I’ll tell Hermes when I find him. He can deal with your stench, fertility god.”

Then she was gone as quickly as she came, and Mitch heaved a sigh of relief, thankful the cost hadn’t been higher.

That...could definitely have gone worse.

◉◎◈◎◉●

In the Underworld, after being prodded by Wayne, Emma, and Paulina, Auston sat up. “Fuck. What the hell happened?”

“I’m a genius!” Wayne declared. “A complete, utter, genius!”

Auston blinked at Wayne in confusion. “What?”

Wayne rattled off something that Auston could not parse for heads nor tails.

Connor and Auston looked at each other. The confusion was wildly apparent in Auston’s eyes.

“A demigod put you into a poison coma, and Wayne woke you up,” Connor translated. Wayne was cheering and slapping his daughters on the back. “Thank god you’re awake.”

“Have you figured out what happened?” Auston asked, and then: “Fuck, Mitch. Is he okay?”

“He’s in the Overworld, trying to find the last missing soul.”

“There are missing souls?” Auston demanded, eyes going wide. “Fuck.”

“We’ve got two of them back. But the third--his brother was the one who did this to you. We haven’t figured out what it was, but it affected you and Freddie, but not Mitch or I.”

“Pretty sure it was in that care package your mom sent,” Auston grumbled. “Maple bacon treats my ass. She’d know better than to send that to you.”

“I thought she was just making a comment about my vegetarianism.” Connor scowled. “And she was using a demigod to do it. It was an Achlys demigod. We haven't figured out the blend he used.”

“Your friend is much worse-off than you are,” Wayne put in. “I was able to, ah, brute force your dosage. The amount I had to give you would be too much for even the god of hell. It’ll need to be a tailored cure for him.”

“Fuck,” Auston said. “Achlys?”

“She’s pretty pissed,” Connor said. “It’ll take a couple centuries for your sister to stop being pissed that we let this slip through the cracks.”

“I’d imagine.” Auston made a face. “I actually...feel pretty okay?”

“That would be the industrial amounts of nectar we were giving you,” Wayne told him cheerfully. “You should feel just about normal, maybe a little stiff.”

Auston grinned wickedly. “So I can go help Mitch drag this last soul back to Tartarus?”

“Medically questionable,” Wayne said. “But morally? Go kick some ass.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

Mitch was exploring downtown Calgary when someone materialized behind him, stepping through a portal.

Artemis had tracked down the Tkachuks to Calgary, and had provided Mitch with several addresses where the siblings had been seen. Hermes had been incredibly amused when he delivered the message.

Mitch figured this was just Hermes again.

“I’m working on it,” he told Hermes. “Thanks for bringing the information.”

“Well, I thought I could help track down this last soul,” a very, very familiar voice said.

Mitch whirled, and there was Auston, a little pale but standing, and with incredible warmth in his eyes.

Mitch threw his arms around Auston. “I was so  _ worried _ ,” he said. “Thank fuck you’re awake.”

Auston pulled Mitch in close, crushing him in a hug. “Thank you. Connor told me everything you’ve been doing.”

“I was so scared,” Mitch admitted. “But...you’d have done the same for me.”

“I’d have tried.” Auston pulled back. “Thank you for coming to me in the Dreamworld. It...helped anchor me. I think that’s why Wayne was able to find me.”

“He’s, uh, something, isn’t he?” Mitch asked. Then, for the first time, he noticed what Auston was wearing. “Is that Connor’s bathrobe? And...slippers?”

Auston flushed. “It’s warm, and I was just sleeping. I thought it would be better if I came to help you rather than...it was silly.”

“No, no, it’s...it’s cute. You should wear stripes more often.”

Auston gave Mitch a kiss, warm and sweet and brief. “I love you.” Another kiss. “Okay. We have one more soul to bring back?”

“And Matthew Tkachuk to bring for judgement.”

Auston smiled. “Good thing that I, the god of death, tend to know where deceased souls are.”

Mitch groaned. “You mean I owe Artemis a favor for no reason?”

“Not no reason,” Auston said. “What if I hadn’t woken up?”

Mitch shuddered. “I’d rather not think about that.”

Auston kept his arm around Mitch’s waist. “So, where are we going?”

Mitch curled into Auston’s side and gestured to the house he was standing in front of. “I think they’ll be here this evening. This is where the brother lives. I’m sure he’d be here with his, uh. Deceased brother.”

“Let’s go ahead and greet them. Want to go knock on the door for me?”

Mitch, a little baffled but willing to play along, went and rang the doorbell.

It was answered by a man only slightly taller than Mitch. “Hello?”

“I’m looking for a spirit you may be harboring,” Mitch said cheerfully. “Matthew Tkachuk, right?”

The younger Tkachuk bared his teeth at Mitch. “You can’t have him.”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “It’s not me you should worry about.”

That was when the god of death, exceedingly pissed off and wearing Connor’s striped bathrobe, smacked Matthew Tkachuk in the back of the head with a frying pan.

“That was probably excessive,” Mitch said.

“You know,” Auston said, looking down at the prone mortal lying before him. “I don’t think I care.”

◉◎◈◎◉●

“I will hear you, mortal child,” Persephone said, when Thanatos forced one mostly-conscious Matthew Tkachuk to his knees before them. “For I know you could not have acted alone.”

“Bitch, I might have,” the human snarled. He struggled to his face. Thanatos, stone-faced, let him. “You’d deserve it, anyways.”

Persephone shifted on their throne. “And why might that be, Matthew Tkachuk?”

“You took my brother,” he said with enough defiance for the entire human race. “And I want him back.”

“Your brother died,” Persephone decreed, not harshly. “His soul is ours now. He is one with Hades, and he will dwell here for eternity.”

The Tkachuck brother set his jaw. “And If I refuse to accept that?”

“There is no refusing. He is dead.”

“I poisoned the god of death,” Matthew spat, looking wild-eyed and desperate. “And the king of Hell. I can do it again.”

“You will  _ not _ ,” Persephone roared.

Matthew collapsed.

Persephone bowed their head in contemplation. The bones in their crown tinkled. The room was silent, awaiting their judgement.

“We are not without sympathy,” Persephone said finally. “But understand, Matthew Tkachuk, that there is order in the cosmos for a reason. Death is a constant, and this is not Hell. This is simply the After. Every being that was, every being that is, and every being that ever will be--they pass through these gates. Your brother died young, yes. But many others do as well. He is not special.”

“Can’t--couldn’t I do as Orpheus did and lead him out?” Matthew begged.

Persephone was quiet. “If you had asked my husband, he would have given you the chance to fail,” they said finally, looking up. The full force of their godly gaze droze Matthew to his knees. “But I am not my husband. Instead, I offer you this, as someone who is separated from family time and time again. On the equinoxes, the days when I travel from the Underworld to the Overworld, you and your sister may see your brother. From sunrise until sunset, he will be with you; you may tell him of the Before, and he may tell you of the After. But after your twelve hours, he must return, and you must not delay him. If you and your sister are ever not there to anchor him, he may never again return to the Overworld. This is what we are willing to give, for a love so strong it transcends death.”

Matthew exhaled. “You’ll recognize the love of brothers?”

Persephone sighed. “I have many siblings, Matthew Tkachuk. Dionysus is among them. I spent half the year with my blood family, and half the year with the family I chose. I have had four millennia to care for my brother, and we do not die. I will never know what it is to never have them again. But I think of burning the world down if I were to truly lose them.”

Matthew, still bent over under the force of Persephone’s godly gaze, managed a smile. “Thank you.”

“There is a concept the modern world would do well to remember. Storge.”

“Storge?”

“It is one of the nine sorts of love, all worthy of respect.” Persephone bowed their head. “Eros, erotic love. Philia, affectionate love. Agape, universal love. Storge, familial love. Mania, obsessive love. Ludus, playful love. Pragma, enduring love. Philautia, self love. They are all important and powerful. Remember that it was Storge and Pragma that brought you our grace. But I wonder if it was another sort of love that aided you.”

Persephone convulsed in a pulse of light, and there was Connor, pale and exhausted. Matthew took a shocked step back.

“Who helped you?” he asked.

“Who are you?” Matthew asked in return.

Connor shrugged, descending the steps of the dais. “I am the mortal avatar of the goddess Persephone. Or at least, the most recent incarnation.”

“But...why?”

Connor came to a stop before Matthew, reaching forward to tilt the mortal’s chin upwards to inspect him.

“There are benefits to not appearing as a nine-foot tall glowing deity with a gaze that could kill mortals and a voice that shakes the walls. How much did your father teach you of the Ways?”

“The Ways? I don’t know. Mostly he just said the gods made mistakes, and they weren’t perfect, but mostly don’t piss them off.”

Connor nodded. “He wasn’t wrong. But there is more. We are primordial beings, from the Beginning of Everything. We are only gods inasmuch as we are relevant to the world around us. Persephone was worshipped thousands of years ago, but only a few care for the Mysteries now. Science is a god of this age, but there will always be Spring and Fall. Persephone--Hagne--still exists. But I, as a form of them, understand how the world as it is now in a way that they never will.”

“So you’re...still her?”

“I am still Persephone, but Connor is dominant at the moment. I have more empathy for the fleetness of human life and the pain of human emotions like this. I thought you would appreciate it, but I can bring back my godly form.”

Matthew blinked. “No, this is...fine.

Connor smiled. “I thought so. But mostly being a mortal avatar allows me to understand how power and Hades itself is maintained at the human level. The concept of a god in this age is a vast, unknowable and infallible being, but that is never who we have been. We are as human as you, only longer-lived. Our mistakes, however….amplify.”

Matthew looked from Connor to Mitch, to Thanatos, still lurking in the back of the room. “Why tell me this?”

“So you understand. We grieve as you do, but we live millenia. My mother has never recovered from my choice to leave. I don’t think your father would recover from you choosing to stay in the Underworld with your brother.” Connor gently patted Matthew on the cheek. “Don’t make your parents lose two sons. One is tragedy enough.”

Connor waited.

Matthew exhaled, shoulders sagging. “I dosed them with batrachotoxin and maitotoxin mixed into ambrosia. The dose I gave Hades would have been enough to wipe out New York City in an eyeblink.”

“And Thanatos?”

“The same, but a lesser dosage,” Matthew said. “I’m--well. I’m not sorry. But now you know.”

Connor nodded regally. “Then return to the Overworld, Matthew Tkachuk, and you will see your brother at the next equinox, if you have told us the truth.”

“I have.”

“Then I will escort him personally,” Connor said. “Thank you for telling me.”

Matthew ruffled a hand through his hair. “Thanks for not killing me, I guess.”

Connor lifted a hand, and Matthew Tkahuk dissolved into sparks, to be reincorporated on the surface.

“Well,” he said, into the silence. “I don’t think anyone could have expected that.”

Thanatos, from the back of the room, snickered. Mitch giggled too.

Connor left the throne room to go help awaken his husband, leaving Death laughing in his wake.

◉◎◈◎◉●

Freddie opened his eyes slowly, feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. His throat was dry and his eyes hurt and he was absolutely staggered by the rush of consciousness after so long of being without any semblance of anything other than Connor’s voice. 

“That’s it, love, you’re okay,” Connor said, holding onto Freddie’s heaving shoulders and kissing his face. “I’m here, I’ve got you.” 

“I’m gonna throw those motherfucking demigods in the deepest pits of  _ Tartarus _ ,” Freddie snarled.

“It’s been handled,” Connor said flatly. “It’s done with.”

“What happened?” Freddie slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, not sure if he could wholly manage sitting.

Connor bit his lip. “Long story or short one?”

“Let’s start with the short, and then we’ll fill in the details.” Freddie winced as his body protested moving after being still for so long.

“Easy,” Connor cautioned, steadying Freddie. “Easy, sweetheart. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

“Well, we’ve got time for you to tell it.”

Connor smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “We do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at satellitesandfallingstars!!


End file.
